{"id":1909,"date":"2014-08-01T01:26:48","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T06:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.devhorizon.com\/reza\/?p=1909"},"modified":"2014-08-01T01:29:37","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T06:29:37","slug":"co-authoring-excel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.devhorizon.com\/reza\/2014\/08\/01\/co-authoring-excel\/","title":{"rendered":"Co-Authoring Excel Documents with SharePoint 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Co-authoring documents has been part of SharePoint for quite a while. This feature\u00a0helps multiple authors work on a given document at the same time while they see each other works\u00a0in\u00a0the document so they\u00a0don’t create conflicts as they\u00a0edit.<\/p>\n

Among all Office client apps (the one that you install with office suit),\u00a0Excel\u00a0client does not support<\/strong><\/span> co-authoring, only through the Excel\u00a0Web App can we do this. This has been clearly documented by Microsoft\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0The limitation is primarily due to Excel\u00a0client’s richness in functionality (i.e. – data models in PivotCharts and PivotTables) which makes co-authoring a bit tricky.<\/p>\n

The requirement for co-authoring is that the document is in fact stored in SharePoint (on-premise or online in Office365) OR SkyDrive. So if you take the document out of SharePoint (or SkyDrive), co-authoring files will be out of the window with it!! Depending on where the document is stored, there are some similarities and differences in behavior which as been documented here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Upgrading to SharePoint 2013 doesn’t change these limitations, however SharePoint 2013 adds a few new features to what was already there (see this post here<\/a>). Overall, there is a better syncing pipeline between co-authors in Excel\u00a0web apps and there is more visibility over who is online doing “what” in the workbook. Limitations still apply though!! When you view a workbook in Excel Web App 2013, some features are not supported or might work differently, as summarized in this post<\/a> by Microsoft (Excel Web App 2010 link is here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

A few common questions I get asked by clients about co-authoring:<\/p>\n