3

I'm looking for ways for a small team (3-4 people) to access and collaborate on several MS Office files (Word and Excel mostly). After researching for a bit, I see that I have the following options:

  1. Upload everything to Dropbox, and edit and collaborate using Office Online. Drawback: having to use Office Online, not being able to use the native Office apps.
  2. The same, but using Box.com, which from what I've seen, only supports Office Online too.
  3. Upload everything to Google Drive, and install the Google Drive plugin for Microsoft Office. Drawback: it doesn't work with Office for Mac.
  4. Upload everything to OneDrive, and collaborate using Office 2016's native features.

Option 4) should be the obvious choice, but my question is: how well does it actually work? From what I have seen, OneDrive for Business had a lot of sync problems for years, and some sources online (Collaborate on Microsoft Word 2016 documents with real-time co-authoring on Mac, https://www.computerworld.com/article/3212262/office-software/how-to-use-excel-live-collaboration.html) say that there are still kinks to be ironed out.

It's hard to find accurate information, because the web is full of blog posts and articles from years ago, and Microsoft, Dropbox, etc. keep adding new features. So... as of today (December 2017), does collaborative editing in native Office apps work seamlessly?

(If I've missed some other option, please suggest it!)

1 Answer 1

0

Answered on Jan. 2018: apparently now it does, finally:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/office-for-mac-finally-has-real-time-collaboration-in-16-9-0-update/

From the article:

Real-time collaboration is long overdue in Office for Mac. Users have been calling for it for quite some time. A major selling point of Google Docs and several other Office alternatives, it has been a slow rollout for this feature in Office regardless of platform. Limited live collaboration was part of the Office 2016 update, but Excel for Windows, for example, didn't get true real-time collaboration until a beta last year.

Now, users on Mac and Windows can see each other's changes in real-time. As in Google docs, thumbnails show which users are collaborating with you on a document. Flag icons indicate where they're working, and their changes appear to collaborators in real time as they work.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .