SharePoint Online Co-authoring in Excel

Co-authoring in Excel – SharePoint

This session is focused on co-authoring Excel spreadsheets stored within SharePoint, and the same user experience would hold true for a spreadsheet stored in OneDrive for business. The current implementation of Excel co-authoring requires that all participants make modifications using Excel online. Co-authoring is not available when editing a spreadsheet using Excel desktop application. I’ll later show the experience of what happens when multiple users try and edit the same spreadsheet using a combination of the Excel desktop application and the Excel online client. I currently have both Garth and Sara viewing the project Falcon budget spreadsheet in Excel online. Let’s begin by having both users change this spreadsheet to edit mode.

Edit Mode for Excel Co-Authoring

Each user receives a notification in the upper right-hand corner of their browser saying that another user is also editing this spreadsheet. In Excel online, each user sees modification made by other users to the spreadsheet in real time. You notice that if I put Garth’s cursor on the cell for 400,000, Sara’s spreadsheet highlights that same cell. And if she hovers over that cell, she’ll see that Garth is making a change to it. So if Garth updates 400,000 to let’s say 500,000 and commits the change, Sara’s spreadsheet will reflect that change immediately, as well as any calculations and charts that rely on that update. The same holds true if Sara were to make a change. And she changes, let’s say 700,000 to 800,000.

Garth can see that’s someone is editing this field. Then as she hovers over that cell, she’ll see that it’s Sara Davis. As soon as she commits that change Garth’s spreadsheet reflects the update and all calculations and charts also receive the update.

So now if Garth stops editing this spreadsheet, you’ll see that Sara is notified that she is the only one now editing this spreadsheet. While Sara still has the spreadsheet open in edit mode, I’ll have Garth try and edit the same spreadsheet using the Excel desktop application.

Excel Desktop vs Excel Online

You’ll see that he receives a notification that it’s currently locked and being edited by Sara Davis. And he can really only open it in read-only mode. This time if we start off by editing the spreadsheet, using a Excel desktop application, and then try and have Sarah edit that same spreadsheet in the Excel online client, she’ll receive a notification that it’s also locked by another user and cannot edit it.

This concludes the co-authoring in Excel session. Stay tuned for my other co-authoring videos to gain a better understanding of what happens with Word and PowerPoint.