I decided that it was worth getting an Office 365 subscription in order to be able to work with Microsoft Word and other Office documents on my iPad, including all the relevant features, such as footnotes and review comments.

A big frustration that many users have voiced is that there is no built-in integration of Dropbox. But I have discovered that there is an inelegant but effective workaround for those of us who don’t want to give up Dropbox, but also want the documents we edit on our iPad to synchronize with other computers that we use.

The key to doing this is simple: make your OneDrive folder, which is the cloud storage system that is integrated into Office for iPad, a sub-folder in your Dropbox folder, and move those folders which contain documents you edit in Office into that folder.

Here are the steps in more detail:

First, sign up for and download OneDrive, the cloud storage service that is the only one integrated into Microsoft Office for iPad. You can use this link to do so.

When it is installing, choose your already-existing Dropbox folder as the one where OneDrive should create its synchronized folder.

Go through the entire process of installing OneDrive (you may need to start over more than once if some file names are too long). Once the OneDrive icon is in your task bar, you can watch it to see when syncing is done.

Nex, drag/move those folders which you will need to access with Office programs into the new OneDrive folder.

Then allow Dropbox and OneDrive to finish syncing.

When that is done, give it a test run, editing the same document back and forth on a PC and on the iPad. It should work smoothly – it has for me! Let me know if you try this solution, and if so, whether you find it satisfactory. Do also share additional suggestions related to integrating Dropbox and Office, if you have any.

One last thing: be sure to install OneDrive on all PCs that you use, choosing the same folder location. That way, not only with your iPad sync with your PC via Dropbox and/or OneDrive, but you can also be sure that any files you edit on a given PC sync back to your iPad.

If this solution does not seem entirely satisfactory for some reason, let me mention that there is another which was shared by Ted Chappell in May. It involves using the command prompt to make a symbolic link between the OneDrive and Dropbox folder. I didn’t opt for this solution because it will require that a PC be on, on which this link has been made, to sync files between the two.