Co-Authoring Documents in Real Time

Quick reference

• 00:04 One of the most popular features of teams is the ability for
• 00:07 multiple people to edit the same file at the same time.
• 00:10 And teams makes this easy for you, let's take a look at what that looks like on
• 00:15 our left we have Megan who's logged into the team's app.
• 00:19 And on the right, we're logged in as Irvin,
• 00:22 now Megan is going to open the usability test document in the browser.
• 00:26 When she opens the file, she can see the file is displayed and
• 00:30 can proceed to make the changes that she wishs, so
• 00:33 we'll click on major milestones and we'll just stay here for a minute.
• 00:37 Now in the meantime, Irvin opens the same document,
• 00:41 now to alert Megan to the fact that someone else is also editing the document.
• 00:46 As soon as Irvin opens the document, Megan will receive a notification that says,
• 00:51 hey, guess what someone else is also looking at this document at the same time.
• 00:57 Similarly, in Irvin's environment, he can see that Megan is also in the document and
• 01:02 it can click to see where she is.
• 01:04 Notice that she's actually selected, the headline major milestone
• 01:09 can see that this is marked with a marker that is color coded for Megan.
• 01:15 And it says major milestones for Megan, and then also on the left side,
• 01:20 we can see that Megan can see that Irvin is now also selected the same headline.
• 01:26 In this way, one or the other of them can edit this and
• 01:30 they will both see the changes as they occur.
• 01:34 Let's just call this minor milestones and on Megan's copy,
• 01:38 she can see the changes that Irvin has made in real time.
• 01:41 Now if she doesn't like them, she can update them or she can change it later,
• 01:44 now is this common whenever you're working in collaborative documents,
• 01:48 sometimes you need to explain what's going on.
• 01:51 So you can click the Comment section and
• 01:54 add a new comment and say hey, this should be major and
• 01:59 leave the comment in the document for everyone to see.
• 02:04 And then consequently, on Irvin's copy,
• 02:07 he could see a comment has been added about his edit.
• 02:13 If Megan opens Microsoft Word, she'll see a very similar experience
• 02:18 as to the web experience, she can tell that Irvin is in the document and
• 02:23 click to see where Irvin is at and see her comment here as well.
• 02:27 In some cases when working with multiple people on a document,
• 02:31 the contributor might make wholesale changes that you'd actually rather keep as
• 02:35 the owner of the document.
• 02:36 In this case, the entire history section is deleted, but Megan would really rather
• 02:41 have it back, well Microsoft Office in collaboration with teams makes it easy for
• 02:45 you to revert to previously saved versions of a document.
• 02:49 As you may recall, saves are changed automatically, so there are frequently
• 02:53 multiple versions of documents, even though someone hasn't explicitly saved it.
• 02:58 To do this, she can simply go to File, and then she can click Info and
• 03:05 see the version history of the document.
• 03:09 She can tell that Irvin has been editing the document and
• 03:14 she may like to restore a copy or save a copy of the document.
• 03:19 Microsoft Word and
• 03:21 Microsoft Office as a whole provides even more capability in this regard.
• 03:25 We'll open this document in Microsoft Word, and then we'll click File,
• 03:30 and then Info, here you can see version history.
• 03:33 When you click on Version History on the right,
• 03:37 you can see who saved the document and when.
• 03:40 Once you click on it, you now have the option of compare or restore and
• 03:45 clicking compare opens up and view that is unique to Microsoft Office.
• 03:51 This isn't in the web based applications, where you can see the original
• 03:56 document as well as the revised document and the compare document in the center.
• 04:02 This allows you to do some pretty fine grain tracking on what's been done and
• 04:06 you can see here we're showing the history section in which we want to recover.
• 04:11 Of course, there are times whenever as the document owner,
• 04:14 you may not want anyone editing your document and you can provide for
• 04:18 that capability by checking out a document.
• 04:20 This prevents other people from making edits, let's see how that works, I can
• 04:26 can click on the document, select the Ellipsis, click More, and then check out.
• 04:31 In that case the document becomes marked with a little icon that indicates
• 04:36 it has been checked out on her screen and also over on Irvin screen.
• 04:41 He can hover over the little arrow,
• 04:44 which shows also that Megan has checked out the document.
• 04:49 Now, if Irvin goes to open the document,
• 04:52 he can still view the document, but edits are no longer permitted.
• 04:57 If he wishes to make a change that document,
• 05:00 he's required to save it as a separate document, and then edit the document.
• 05:04 In this way, Megan can preserve her copy of the document,
• 05:08 now when she's done with it, she can go back and check in the document,
• 05:13 make a comment about the changes she made.
• 05:16 And by the way, those comments are then visible and the versions list that we saw
• 05:21 earlier whenever you want to check the versions of a document, so
• 05:24 you can distinguish between the various versions.
• 05:27 She can also discard the checkout, meaning she makes no changes whatsoever,
• 05:32 but just released the document for future years.
• 05:35 This is a very useful feature built right into teams and works great with Office,
• 05:40 so let's review co-authoring documents in real-time in teams.
• 05:44 Multiple authors can work on a document at the same time, the authors and where they
• 05:49 are working are shown in real time to everyone that's working on the document.
• 05:53 And you can see the edits as they happen as well as who's making the edits,
• 05:57 if you wish you can revert to a previous version of a document.
• 06:01 And compare versions of a document when you use the Office application,
• 06:05 you can check out a file to keep other people from editing a document.
• 06:09 And when you're done, you can check it back in or
• 06:11 discard the checkout to release the lock, a great way of using co-editing is in team
• 06:16 meetings which is the next topic of discussion.

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