Co-Authoring Feature in SharePoint – FAQs

What is co-authoring exactly means?
Co-Authoring is an amazing feature in SharePoint – Office Web Apps, which allows multiple users to edit and collaborate concurrently in real-time. Yes, You heard it right! Multiple authors can edit one document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), and simultaneously other users’ changes will reflect to everyone! It’s definitely a great productivity-boosting feature.

Multiple users can work on the same document simultaneously while they see each other working in the document, so they don’t make any conflicts as they make edits. There is no limit to the number of users, and any number of people can work on the same document at the same time.

How to use Co-Authoring in SharePoint 2013 with Office Web Apps?

Here is how the Co-authoring works in Excel documents with SharePoint 2013 – Office Web Apps:

Step 1: Navigate to any document library/folder where your Excel files are stored. Click on the context menu button and click on More options as in the below screen.

Step 2: Choose the “Edit in Browser” menu item from the context menu.

Step 3: This launches your Excel Sheet in Edit mode in the browser. You can get the changes as soon as any other user makes it – concurrently editing the document.

When more than one person is working on the same file, You’ll get all author names at the bottom right section.

Alternatively, You can just click on the document to launch it in read-only mode in the browser and click on the “Edit in Browser” command from the ribbon.

Please note that Co-Authoring feature is not available through all office clients (E.g., Co-authoring is available only through Excel Web Apps for Excel spreadsheets. For word documents, Co-Authoring is available via Microsoft Office Word Application). Also, It doesn’t work when you enable check-in/check-out functionality! Refer to this Technet link for supported clients: Overview of co-authoring in SharePoint 2013