Who among you use the Docs Conversion feature?

#1

Hey there! Does anyone use the Docs Conversion feature here? :raised_hand:

We’re looking to make some improvements to our feature set, but first we need to hear your experiences and workflows.

  1. How do you use the Docs Conversion feature? Where does that fit in your workflow?
  2. What difficulties are you having with the current Docs Conversion feature?
  3. How does the Docs Conversion feature improve your daily workflow?
  4. What were you using/doing to convert your documents prior to Insync?

Please share your stories to help us build a better product. If you prefer to share privately, feel free to email me at josh.cabalinan@insynchq.com with subject: “Docs Conversion”.

Thank you! :slight_smile:

1 Like
#3
  1. My workflow is to work online and backup locally. I want a version of my Google Docs documents that doesn’t tie me exclusively to Google, so when I’m backing up to my local hard drive I use the Google Docs conversion feature to ensure I have a copy that I can use with other software.

Note that this is a critical feature. In my past job where I had to decide whether to use Google Services companywide - the ability to backup Google Documents to Word Documents using InSync was the deciding factor for going ahead with Google.

  1. I’ve never had a problem withe the Doc Conversion feature.

  2. For me Docs Conversion a backup feature only. If I’m working in Google Docs and I want to send a docx or pdf file to someone, I use the File convert feature directly in Google Docs to create an appropriate document and send that.

  3. I didn’t. I just didn’t use Google Docs at all.

2 Likes
#4

The Docs Conversion feature is the number one feature that keeps me using Insync instead of Google’s sync clients.

  1. I use Docs Conversion to download local copies of my Google Docs files automatically. Google’s sync clients simply download a link to the file online, so I use Insync to download local copies that can be backed up using Carbon Copy Cloner, which clones my entire hard drive to an external drive. I also use various other programs to sync changes in my Insync folder to other locations for backup. Without Insync’s Docs Conversion feature, none of my backup schemes would work.

  2. I don’t think I’ve had any issues with this features that I’ve noticed.

  3. I use it only for the backup regime described above. I interface with Google Docs exclusively using Google’s interface.

  4. Insync has made my entire backup regime possible. I didn’t have a method to make this backup scheme work with Google Docs before this.

2 Likes
#5

Thanks for the feedback @hexalellogram!

We actually turned this into a blog post since it’s a very interesting use-case that could benefit many users. Let me know what you think!

Cheers,
Greg

#6

I’m another backup-only user. I’m converting to ODF as I’m using LibreOffice suite. Originally, I thought I could not only use it for backup, but also for offline editing of files when I’m travelling, but that doesn’t work well. Once I edit the ODF file and Insync updates it on Google Docs, formatting gets pretty much broken (both text and tables). But as a read-only feature, it’s great.

It also allows me to have a “unified” find experience - if I enter a search term into my system search box, it searches both my ODF-first and Google Docs together, which is nice. Ubuntu used to have this feature through Unity lenses, but as Unity is no longer the default GUI, I’ve lost this feature. And AFAIK, Windows don’t have search plugins.

When upgrading to version 3, there was a glitch that created tens of .fodt files and uploaded them online. But I think that’s fixed.

Sometimes, it also happens Insync incorrectly recognizes what local file belongs to a Google doc. I use Insync on more computers, and when this happens, it starts making several copies of the file (named “document (2).odt” and so on). And it then mistakenly uploads these files as ODT files to Google docs. But it doesn’t happen often and I can live with it.

1 Like
#8
#9

This is one reason I would like to see a “one-way” sync. It would act solely as a backup and be easier if that’s all that’s needed.