Coauthor an Office document

- [Instructor] I think one of the best collaboration features of SharePoint is the ability to have simultaneous authoring or editing in a document. How this works is, I open a document and begin editing it and someone else also wants to edit and they can do that at the same time. Gone are the days of waiting until I'm done with the document to hand it off to someone else. We can all be working at the same time and when I say all that doesn't mean a hundred people, but I've had up to 10 or 12 people editing a document at the same time. Let's take a look, for example, at the Landon Promotions Letter. And I'd like to open this and open it for editing. I'm going to edit this in Word Online, which is where coauthoring actually works. Let's say, then, that another one of my colleagues opens this same document for editing while I'm in it. Now, Rob's viewing the document right now, we can't see that, but when Rob then chooses to also edit this in Word Online, I'll begin to see that I have someone else working along with me. Notice that when I click in the document it says Rob Young is editing this document. There's a little icon here that shows me where Rob is working and if, for example, Rob is editing in the first paragraph of the document, I can actually be editing this as well. So, I can make a modification. Rob's also making modifications and I can see that his modifications are showing up on my screen. Mine are also showing up on his screen, but notice that if I modify, for example, the font for a paragraph, change this to Times New Roman, that works. Let's say at the same time, Rob's editing, and he modifies a paragraph to highlight it. I'll see that reflected on my screen the next update, just like this. When I leave this editing session my changes are saved. He doesn't have to leave at the same time. He can continue working or I can work after he does. I can tell that my changes are being saved right here at the bottom of the screen. So, If I'm ready to leave this document I can simply leave. This is how coauthoring works for Microsoft Word. Coauthoring also works for Microsoft PowerPoint. If I'm working on an Excel document, this works a little bit differently. If we open, for example, the event expense budget and I choose to edit in Excel Online and I'm making whatever modifications I wish and then at some point, someone else opens this, for example, Rob, and chooses to edit, notice, exactly the same, except in this case, what's happening is that the locking is happening on a cell by cell basis. So if I'm working in one cell, I can always see what cell Rob is working in. We can't both modify the same cell. So it's important that I notice that he has a blue icon because wherever Rob is working in the document, as he moves from cell to cell, that blue box will show me where he's working and where, therefore, I cannot work. Whether you're working with Excel, Word, or PowerPoint, coauthoring makes many of our business processes where multiple people touch a document go more smoothly and more quickly.