Given that Google is apparently data mining my efforts writing in a Google Doc every day I should probably shift over and work out of Microsoft Office 365. This word processing document that I’m working out of right now is actually a .DOCX file that just happens to be opened out of Google Docs. It would not take very much effort to move the files over to the Microsoft side of things.  

Hold on just a second here while I make the switch.  

I went out to Google Drive and download the entire novels directory as a zip file. After extracting all those files into the downloads directory, I went ahead and loaded them into the Microsoft OneDrive backup folder for this computer. That took just a couple of minutes to accomplish and now for the first time in a long time. I think it was last year when I was typesetting the “The Lindahl Letter: On Machine Learning” manuscript. I used to work out of Microsoft Word as my primary word processing system for years. Gradually I made the switch to Google Docs and was pretty happy with it until the recent reports of the strangeness related to tracking people. I don’t know if Microsoft is even remotely interested in the things that happen in Microsoft Word. At some point here in a few minutes I’m going to open this document up using the online interface for Office 365 to see how that goes. 

Writing in a standalone application and not just a tab within Chrome is a stranger feeling than I expected this morning. Now that I have the Office 365 web interface pulled up, I now remember why I abandoned this worked processing interface and went over to work out of Google Docs full time. This interface is just visually clunky and unrefined by comparison. The design aesthetic is just so much better out of the Google Doc. I am going to give working out of this interface a try for a few days to see if my feelings about it change over time. Maybe I will get used to the experience and be able to handle working out of the Office 365 ecosystem for work processing.