[tcpekin]

I have had the exact same experience as the OP and if you can convince several PI's with better things to do than reinstall a new version of Word, people at other institutions without MS Office licenses using Libre Office and others who don't use either and convert it back and forth to a Google Doc (thereby breaking all the hyperlinking), I would honestly be baffled.

Now, in collaborative work I use Overleaf so there is no configuration problems with installing LaTeX (Google Docs for LaTeX), and give everyone write access if they want it, I sync it with my Dropbox and have a working LaTeX distribution if I want to edit without access to the network. Those who don't know LaTeX (which is a small number, especially if they don't want to learn the basics to edit the .tex file in the appropriate place) I can convert a version to Word for their edits, which I then incorporate, or they can just markup a PDF. The Overleaf document then has a complete history of edits, Overleaf supports Word-style comments and track changes, and I can be happy in that the other authors aren't going to break something in the Word "backend".

[fwip]

I guess if you trust DropBox and Overleaf with sensitive data but not Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365, that works. (If Overleaf is self-hosted, please disregard that part.)

I also find offline word processors frustrating to collaborate on, but I am worried that OP is rationalizing their personal preferences post-hoc, rather than looking for the best option for everyone.

Thanks for the pointer to Overleaf, I will definitely check it out.

Edit: sorry, I thought you were the OP at first.

[tcpekin]

Yeah, not the OP, but if I had sensitive information I don't know what I would do. I know this sounds shill-like, but I absolutely love Overleaf for Latex. It has every package you need, decent templates that you can then customize, and the Dropbox and GitHub integration are great - uploading an image is as simple as saving it in the right Dropbox folder - very useful for when trying to upload a bunch of images or update a figure in Illustrator. I end up using MikTex like 2-3 times a year when I'm on a plane, and then everything syncs once I'm back online. Being able to see who changed what is also great, and much less overhead than trying to convince non-programmers to use git or something like that for the Latex files.