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About this lesson
Create a new document in Word Online and learn how to make edits. Explore all the options available for working with and managing documents stored in the library.
Exercise files
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Quick reference
Modifying and Editing Documents
Now we have some documents in the library, it's time to see how we can edit those documents.
When to use
Edit a document in the document library whenever a change needs to be made.
Instructions
Creating a New Document using Word Online
- From the Home page, click New.
- Select Word document. The document will open in Word Online.
- Add some sample text.
- Click on the document title and rename to something more meaningful.
- Close the window.
Editing a Document in Word Online
- From the document library, click on the document link. The file will open in Word Online.
- Make some changes to the document. The file will save automatically.
- Close the window.
More Document Actions
- From the document library, hover the mouse over the document.
- Click the three dots to see a menu of actions.
- Open - open the file in Word Online.
- Preview - see a preview of the file before you open it.
- Share - share the file with others.
- Copy link - copy the link to the file to paste into an email or other application.
- Manage access - manage who has access to the file.
- Download - download the file to work on it offline.
- Delete - delete the file from the document library.
- Automate - add automation using Power Automate.
- Rename - rename the file.
- Pin to top - pin important documents to the top of the document library.
- Move to - move the file to another folder.
- Copy to - copy the file to another folder.
- Version history - see all versions of the document and restore previous version if required.
- Alert me - add an alert me notification to the document.
Checking Out Documents
If we open a document and start editing it, that document is not exclusively for our use. Any other team member can also open the document and start making changes at the same time. To prevent this from happening and lock the document for exclusive use, we can check it out, make our changes, and then check it back in when we are finished.
- Click More and select Check Out.
- The document is now checked out to you and no one else can access the document.
- Click More and select Check In to release the document.
Hints & tips
- Online version of MS apps are slimmed down versions of the full desktop versions. To open a document in the full version of Word, open it in Word Online, click Editing and select Desktop App.
- When a document is checked out to you, other people will be able to see that you have the document open by moving their mouse over the document link.
- 00:04 So we've just seen how we can upload documents into the document library.
- 00:08 What I'd like to focus on in this lesson is how we can modify and
- 00:12 edit documents that are stored within these document libraries.
- 00:15 Now, I've done a little bit of this already, so
- 00:18 this process shouldn't be too unfamiliar to you.
- 00:21 What we're going to do is we're going to create another brand-new document.
- 00:26 So let's jump up to the New button.
- 00:28 Let's go for a Word document again, simply because it's the easiest.
- 00:33 It's going to open in Word Online,
- 00:35 remember that slimmed down version of Word.
- 00:38 I'm going to add in some sample text.
- 00:41 So I'm going to use my little Rand trick again to add 30 paragraphs of five
- 00:46 lines each.
- 00:46 Nice and straightforward, and I'm going to give this document a name.
- 00:52 So let's click where it says Document, and I'm going to call this Training Agenda.
- 00:59 Click away, wait till it says Saved, and then I can close this window down.
- 01:05 Wait a couple of seconds, it will refresh, and your file will appear.
- 01:09 So once we have our files in our library, what happens if we want to edit them and
- 01:14 make changes to them?
- 01:16 Well, what I can do is I can click on the link for the document.
- 01:20 Now that is by default going to open it in Word Online in editing mode.
- 01:26 So I can now come in here and I can make whatever changes I need to make.
- 01:29 So maybe we want to make the first paragraph bold, and
- 01:33 maybe I want to add some highlight to the third paragraph.
- 01:38 And you'll see that as I do that, I'm not having to save,
- 01:42 every now and again or flash Saving in this top bar,
- 01:45 you know it's saving the last changes that you've made as you go along.
- 01:49 And I would recommend waiting until it says saved up here before closing
- 01:54 the window down.
- 01:56 Now if you don't particularly like using this online version of what Word, and
- 02:00 I will say the major difference between the online version and the full desktop
- 02:04 version is that there is slightly less functionality in the online version.
- 02:08 For example, you won't find things like mail merges in the online version of Word.
- 02:14 I would say that for the most part, if you're just reviewing and
- 02:18 making edits to documents, then the online version is perfectly adequate.
- 02:22 But if you just rather work in the desktop version, you can open it there as well.
- 02:28 So where it says Editing at the top, if we click the drop-down, you can see you have
- 02:32 at the bottom there an option that will allow you to open in the desktop app.
- 02:37 So I'm going to say yes, I want to open in the full version of Word, and
- 02:41 it's going to bring me back to my more familiar word interface.
- 02:45 And the cool thing is if I make a change here, so
- 02:48 let's just change this font to red.
- 02:51 Again, you can see at the top, it is saving,
- 02:54 I'm going to wait until that says Saved.
- 02:57 If I close down the document, the page will refresh in Word Online, and
- 03:02 those changes have been pulled through.
- 03:04 So the point I'm trying to make here is it doesn't matter if you edit the document in
- 03:08 the online version or the desktop version, all of the changes will synchronize.
- 03:12 Now, let's close down this document and go back to our document library,
- 03:16 because there's a few other things in here that I'd like to show you.
- 03:20 So at the bottom here where we have our training agenda,
- 03:23 you'll notice when I hover my mouse over, I have these three dots just here.
- 03:27 And this is going to show me more actions for this particular document, and
- 03:32 I have a whole host of menu items in this contextual menu.
- 03:36 So I can open in the browser or in the app, I can preview,
- 03:40 I can share it with other people from here.
- 03:43 I can copy the link and I can manage access to the document.
- 03:47 I can even download it.
- 03:48 So if I wanted to work on a document offline, so maybe if I knew that I was
- 03:53 going to be on a plane or maybe in a train station where I don't have an internet
- 03:58 connection, I could download the file and work on it locally.
- 04:03 I can delete, I can add some automation,
- 04:05 we're going to talk about that more a bit later on.
- 04:08 I can rename the file from here, I can even pin it to the top of the list.
- 04:14 So if this is a particularly important document, I might choose to pin it.
- 04:17 Now I'm actually going to unpin this to put it back.
- 04:21 I can move, I can copy, I can take a look at the version history.
- 04:26 So you can see here that every time a change has been made to this document,
- 04:31 it's created a new version.
- 04:32 And that's going by my versioning settings,
- 04:35 I selected to choose major versions, which means one, two, three, four.
- 04:38 And each change I've made, so when I change it to bold, when I change
- 04:43 the highlight, when I change the font color, created a new version each time.
- 04:49 As I said, I'm not going to dive too far into this at the moment because we do have
- 04:53 a whole lesson on versioning.
- 04:55 And then the final options that we have in here, the one that I want to highlight
- 04:59 is if we go to More, you'll also see we have a check-out option just here.
- 05:03 Because checking in and checking out is a really important concept to get
- 05:07 your head around when working with documents.
- 05:10 Now, for example, when I opened the Training Agenda a minute ago, and
- 05:14 I started making some edits in Word, that document wasn't locked specifically to me.
- 05:20 If I have other colleagues looking at this document library,
- 05:23 they could also have clicked on the document, and
- 05:26 we could have collaborated and worked on the document together.
- 05:30 And that cool Collaboration aspect is a really amazing thing in Microsoft 365.
- 05:34 But sometimes maybe you want to reserve the document for yourself and
- 05:39 lock it so that no one else can get in and start making changes.
- 05:44 If that's the case, what you want to do is check out your document.
- 05:48 So if I click Check Out,
- 05:50 you can see that I now get this little red symbol next to it.
- 05:54 And if I hover over it, it says that I've checked out this item.
- 05:58 Now for anyone else looking at this document library when they hover over this
- 06:01 symbol, they'll be able to see that it's me who has this document checked out.
- 06:06 And that basically means this document is locked exclusively for my use.
- 06:12 Once I've made my changes, if I close down I can then check the document back in,
- 06:17 which will allow other people to go in and make their changes.
- 06:21 So I'm going to say Check in.
- 06:23 I can add a little bit of a comment there to describe what
- 06:26 has changed in this version, and then I can check it back in.
- 06:31 So that is a really good way of securing a document for your own exclusive use.
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