Work on Word docs at the same time as others using SkyDrive

In our last update, we used HTML5 to make SkyDrive faster for browsing and accessing your files from anywhere, on any browser. But we know that many of you want to do more than just store documents on SkyDrive - you also want to share and collaborate. Today, I?m thrilled to join the Office team in announcing that we?re improving collaboration by bringing co-authoring to the Word Web App, in addition to Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Word for Mac 2011. You?re already using SkyDrive to simultaneously edit your files on the web in Excel and OneNote, and now you can do this in Word too.

It?s no secret that we love Word around here. We use it to author all the specifications for our products, as well as all the blog posts on this blog. These are professional documents that we produce all the time, and millions of people have been using Word to express and communicate thoughts and ideas for more than three decades.

Word has a long history of innovation. I remember when the red squiggly line arrived, and I no longer had to manually spell check all the school papers I wrote. I also remember when Word introduced auto-correct and many common mistakes were corrected for me. (I still get corrected to this day!) I remember when Outlook started to use Word as its default editor, and all the power of Word arrived in my email, the place where I write the most. In short, I have grown up with Word, first on the Mac, and now on the PC, and I?m happy that we can still offer ways to help you be more productive.

In fact, I?ve been using Word 2010 with SkyDrive to collaborate on this blog post. I?ve been writing, while my colleague Harrison has been simultaneously updating my post with screen shots to demonstrate this new capability. As he and I saved what we were working on individually, SkyDrive merged everything together in one, clean doc.

We made a video of us creating this post ? from initial brainstorming in OneNote to final output in Word.

Word communicates when collaborators are editing

In the Word Web App, a yellow notification area lets you know that I?ve started editing the doc.

In Word 2010, the bottom status window shows everybody who is working on the document. Here, you can see that Harrison and I are hard at work.

In Word for Mac 2011, there?s a similar notification that shows everybody who is actively collaborating.

Notifications show when specific sections are being edited

When you?re editing a document and someone else is making changes simultaneously, you get a notification. As I was writing my post, a notification let me know that Harrison was inserting a screen shot.

So how does it all save?

To start, in an effort to prevent conflicts, Word will only let a single person edit a given section. When you?re ready to update the document on SkyDrive with your changes, and see the changes that your friends have made, all you have to do is save the document. After you save, the doc is refreshed, and you can see all of the changes highlighted in green.

I?ve had the pleasure of using this feature over the past few weeks to author several blog posts, and I appreciate how this lets me work with multiple people on a document and keeps me updated on their changes.

Please visit The Office Web Apps Blog for the complete announcement and more details on co-authoring in Word Web App on SkyDrive.

- Omar Shahine, Group Program Manager, SkyDrive.com

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