How To Integrate Dropbox and Google Drive into Microsoft Office 2013 [updated for Windows 8.1]

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Microsoft Office 2013, a version that has cloud developed in mind, has seamlessly integrated Microsoft own cloud service, SkyDrive. Users who have signed up with SkyDrive service take advantage of saving and opening files directly from and to the cloud. But what about those who only use Dropbox and Google Drive, the other two popular file sharing cloud services that compete with SkyDrive? Rest assured, here is actually a workaround to integrate your Office 2013 with Dropbox and Google Drive to give quick access to your files and folders on the cloud. Thanks to Hongkiat.

Integrate with Dropbox in Office 2013

Before you do that, make sure you have Dropbox client installed on your computer.

Then, download this batch file (right-click the link and save as…) and run it as an administrator by right-clicking the downloaded file and choosing Run as administrator. Follow the onscreen instruction to finish the process. You will need to provide the full path of your local Dropbox folder during the setup.

Once done, open one of the Microsoft Office applications, e.g. Word or Excel, go to File, and add Dropbox through Add a place.

Word File Add a place Dropbox thumb - How To Integrate Dropbox and Google Drive into Microsoft Office 2013 [updated for Windows 8.1]

And you only need to “Add a place” once. Next time when you go to File, you will see Dropbox is already listed as a regular place like SkyDrive.

Word File thumb - How To Integrate Dropbox and Google Drive into Microsoft Office 2013 [updated for Windows 8.1]

Integrate Google Drive in Office 2013

Same as above, make sure you have Google Drive client installed before doing anything.

Then, download this batch file and run it as administrator. Follow the onscreen instructions to finish the integration process. You will need to provide the full path of your local Google Drive folder location during the setup.

Open one of the Microsoft Office applications, go to File, and add Google Drive location through Add a place.

Word File Add a place Google Drive thumb - How To Integrate Dropbox and Google Drive into Microsoft Office 2013 [updated for Windows 8.1]

What’s behind the scene?

What either of the batch files do is to add a bunch of registries into your local computers. Therefore, running it requires an admin privilege to finish. It’s not complicated but does take a bit hard work to find out all the necessary registry settings.

How to remove

In the event that you are no longer using either of the services, you can remove it out of your Office applications. Simply open one of the Office application, go to File, and click Account. Under “Connected Services”, click on “Remove” link.

Word File Account remove thumb - How To Integrate Dropbox and Google Drive into Microsoft Office 2013 [updated for Windows 8.1]

/Update on Nov. 20, 2013/

If you see error such as “Sorry we can’t make this update because there are problems with your account. To fix your account, try signing in again“, go to File → Account, and sign in your Microsoft Account or Office Account again. Thanks to Jens for sharing this fix in the comments.

/update on Dec. 26, 2013/

Both batch download files have been updated to work in Windows 8.1 as well.

30 COMMENTS

  1. I had to be signed into the Office App (top right with a Microsoft Account) for it to finally show up. Soon as I did, Google Drive showed up from previously running the batch file.

  2. it didn’t worked for me. I tried switching accounts and it still didn’t show up! I followed instructions correctly… any registry entry I can check?

  3. For google drive, make sure that when prompted, the path you enter does NOT have quotes around it. If you Tab complete, you will wind up with quotes around the path. Get rid of them or it won’t work. No problem for dropbox since it is single word. If your user ID is multi word (first name, last name) and you Tab complete, you run into the same issue.

  4. I get an error (both for Google Drive & Skydrive):

    “Sorry we can’t make this update because there are problems with your account. To fix your account, try signing in again.”.

    How to fix that??

  5. I ran this several times but Dropbox doesn’t appear as an option. I’m running Windows 8.1. I found this article because one of my Word files was not loading properly in Word 2013–a file that on my desktop (running Word 2007) was 32 pages only had the first 16 when I opened it on my laptop with Word 2013. Oddly, it had the headings for the missing section listed on the left, but when I pressed on them nothing happened. Neither could I search for terms in the missing pages. Has anyone else run into this?

  6. Worked great on my win8.1. So glad i don’t have to use Skydrive. Microsoft shouldn’t push their own service like that.

  7. With “the dropbox client installed on your computer” is this the Dropbox on a W8.1 computer obtained from the Windows store and showing as a tile, Or a separate download from the Dropbox website downloaded conventionally? Any guidelines on the file path would be appreciated. You have thank MS for making this so user non-friendly!
    Regards John

      • Thanks Kent did this. And followed the rest of your guide and Dropbox now linked. Thanks.

        For others not sure about the full path of the Dropbox folder – from downloading Dropbox from the Dropbox website (not Windows store app) rightclicked the Dropbox icon on my desktop > Dropbox properties. Look under General my location showed as “C;UsersPassword is “user’Dropbox”. This is what I pasted into the batch file.

  8. Thank you sooooo much. I had the patch for 8.0 but upgraded to 8.1 and would not recognize the OS. This worked great for 8.1….. Thank god for the folks who write this script because Microsoft was NO help

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