If you have ever collaborated with others to write a document, you know what chaos can ensue as you try to control versions and manage the time and sequence of edits.
In Microsoft Office 2010, co-authoring enables two or more people to edit a document simultaneously. Sections of the document are simply blocked off for each author to have exclusive control of a part of the document.
You can work on a document while others edit other parts of the same document at the same time. This saves having to wait until you have made your additions and edits before they can make their changes.
This increases everyone's productivity because all contributors can access the document when they want to. Multiple users can be making changes to different parts of the document without having to wait for it to be saved and checked before getting access, thus speeding up the process of collaboratively completing a document.
Co-authoring in SharePoint and Office 2010 represents a major improvement over 2007. The 2007 Office suite included Groove, a peer-to-peer collaboration application that enabled you to work simultaneously on a document with another user. Both users needed to have Groove installed on their PCs, however. With SharePoint and Office 2010, you can co-author simultaneously with another user by simply using a browser. The document, of course, must be stored on SharePoint 2010, and both users must be using Office 2010.
In order for co-authors to work on a document simultaneously, each author must select a portion of the document and block other authors from editing it. This is done by following these steps:
- Select the text you want to edit.
- Click on the Review tab.
- In the Protect group, click on Block Authors.
The selected text will appear with an icon in the left margin indicating that the section has been blocked to keep others from editing it.
In order to make the section available again, you must save the document and upload it to SharePoint. But, while the section is blocked, other authors can block other available text and edit while you are making your changes.
When changes are saved and uploaded to SharePoint, they become available to other users as well.