Dropbox and Quickoffice give you instant syncing of Microsoft Office files across all your Macs and your iPhone

See how many awards Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite has won? It's worth the $15, believe us.

Difficulty Level: Easy

What You Need:

>> One or more Macs in any location, running Microsoft Office
>> One or more iPhones or iPod touches
>> Dropbox (free for 2GB of storage, $50/year for 50GB, $100/year for 100GB; dropbox.com)
>> Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite ($14.99 in the App Store, quickoffice.com)

Editing shared Microsoft Office documents at the office is easy: Just make your changes in whatever shared folder you use, and your colleagues will instantly see the new versions of those files. But once you leave the office without a laptop in your bag, things get more difficult. Even if you move an Office document to your iPhone using a third-party app, you’re still out of sync with the rest of your network. For example, if you edit a Word document on your iPhone, the new version is stuck on your iPhone until you get it back to your Mac network. And if someone else on your network makes changes to the document on their Mac after you’ve already transferred that same file to your iPhone, you’ll never see those changes.

Thanks to the combination of Dropbox and Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite, your iPhone and your Macs can all act like multiple devices sharing Office files on the same network--no matter where you are. (And we hate to bring up the Dark Side, but this will work seamlessly on PCs as well.) Once you see how simple this is to configure, you’ll wonder why everything in life can’t be this easy.

1. Install Dropbox

This might be the easiest-to-configure program we've ever setup on our Mac.

If somehow you don’t yet have Dropbox, download the Mac installer from dropbox.com, install it on your Mac, open it from your Applications folder, and set up your account. Do this on every Mac or PC that will need access to the same Microsoft Office files, and use the same Dropbox account info on every machine.

2. What It Does

Dropbox integrates into the Finder, showing up as a folder in your home folder.

The installation puts a Dropbox folder inside your home folder, which automatically synchronizes with the Dropbox folders on all your other computers, as well as the Dropbox website. The website, which you can access from any browser, even keeps backup copies of every revision you make to a file.

3. Drop in Office Files

The green check marks on these files means they've been successfully synchronized with the Dropbox service.

Drag all of the Microsoft Office files that you want to share and edit across all of your computers and iPhones into your Dropbox folder. You can drop them in as individual files or organize them into folders. Every time you edit a file and save it, those changes are automatically synchronized to your other Dropbox devices.

4. Enter Quickoffice

You'll need to create an account on Quickoffice.com before you can move forward with its iPhone app's Dropbox connectivity.

Now you need to create an account with Quickoffice.com. Go to quickoffice.com/user_account/, click the Create Account tab, and fill out the fields. You’ll be sent a verification email to confirm your account; click the link in that email to verify.

5. Meanwhile, on Your iPhone

Luckily, you only have to do the sign-in dance once.

Head to the App Store (in iTunes or on your iPhone) and pick up Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite ($14.99). Sync both apps to your iPhone or iPod touch, and launch Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite. The first thing you have to do is press the gear icon at the bottom, scroll to where it says Sign In, press a few more redundant Sign In buttons, and log in with the account you created in Step 4.

6. Connect to Dropbox

Log in to your Dropbox account and give it a description like My Dropbox Files.

Now you’re ready to connect Quickoffice to your Dropbox account. Press the Edit button at the top of the main Quickoffice screen. Choose Add Account. (The Add Attachments option is for Microsoft Exchange users who want to receive email attachments directly into this iPhone app.) From the list of services, choose Dropbox. Then log in to your Dropbox account on the next screen.

7. Dropbox Access

Look familiar?

You’ll be taken back to the main Quickoffice screen, which now and forever will have an icon for your Dropbox account. Tap it to see all your Dropbox files--the same ones you saw on your Mac in Step 3. You can also create new documents that will instantly appear in your Dropbox as soon as you save them. Instead of choosing the document you want to edit, just press the “new document” icon at the bottom left.

8. Edit Away

The iPhone doesn't natively offer this kind of Office-doc editing.

Tap on the file you’d like to edit, and it’ll open on your iPhone. Quickoffice even supports rich-text editing functions like text formatting, bulleted lists, paragraph alignment, and more.

9. Save 'n' Sync

Save As, of course, saves your edited document as a new file.

When you’re done making changes, press the Back button at the top, and Quickoffice will prompt you to save your changes. Choose Save or Save As, and your changes will be updated in your Dropbox. Within seconds, your modified document will be accessible to every computer and every iPhone that has access to your Dropbox account--just as if you were editing a shared document live on your computer’s network all along.