Collaboration on a document

Sharing and collaborating on documents in the OneDrive repository is not a new feature. Still, Office 2021 has taken it to a significantly higher level. Collaboration on a document is available in most Office applications, and in this “recipe” we will focus on Excel: how to share a document, how to see what your peers are doing, and how Sheet View works – a view of a document in which you see your own changes.

Commenting on shared documents

Comments in Excel are not new option. Nevertheless, from the version to the version, there was more and more work to improve the possibility of collaborative work on the documents. Consequently, Excel has a new type of comment. They refer to commenting on shared documents, which in most cases are on the OneDrive repository, and you can view them in a simple way: by clicking the Comments button in the upper right corner of the window.

Doodling over the document

Excel is increasingly being used on mobile devices. Although, due to their size, they are not the ideal solution for making reports, as they enable mobility, these computers or tablet devices are a great solution for the presentation of reports. Recently Excel got a group of options, integrated in the Draw ribbon, which allow you to doodle over report and leave comments, just like you would do with the pencil.

Co-authoring in Excel

Newer versions of Excel no longer support the document sharing option I have written in one of the earlier texts. It can still be used after manually adding to the quick menu or toolbar, but collaborating on documents has evolved into co-authoring. This means that the documents are saved on the OneDrive repository, and that the right-hand users can change them at the same time.

Allow Users to Edit Ranges

With Protect Sheet and Protect Workbook, a user can protect a worksheet or workbook so that only a person who knows the correct password can access them. However, what if we want to protect only part of the worksheet? Also, if more than one user is simultaneously working on the document, is it possible to grant them different access rights? Can the system administrator use domain rights for this purpose? Meet the Allow Users to Edit Ranges option.