Tech Lounge for SharePoint, BI and .Net: CO-AUTHORING DOCUMENTS IN SHAREPOINT 2013

Co-authoring in SharePoint helps multiple users to access a document or edit a document simultaneously. This functionality enhances collaboration, improves user experience and adoption of SharePoint.

CO-AUTHORING

The term "Co-Authoring" in SharePoint is a feature that supports multiple (2 or more) users collaborating together on the same file/document at the same time.

File TYPE supported for CO-AUTHORing

The following file types can be Co-Authored.

Word
Excel (Supported only in Excel online / Excel Web App and Not in Client)
PowerPoint
OneNote
Visio 2013

OFFICE VERSION	SP2013 On-Premises	SharePoint Online	SP2010 On-Premises
Word 2013/2010	Yes	Yes	Yes
Word Web App	Yes	Yes	Yes
Excel 2013/2010	No	No	No
Excel Web App	Yes	Yes	Yes
PowerPoint 2010/2013	Yes	Yes	Yes
PowerPoint Web App	Yes	Yes	Yes
OneNote 2013/2010	Yes	Yes	Yes
OneNote Web App	Yes	Yes	Yes
Visio 2013	Yes	Yes	Yes
Visio Web App	No	No	No

Permission Levels Required FOR CO- AUTHORING

For co-authoring a document users must have permissions to access & edit the documents.

VERSIONING WITH CO-AUTHORING

When two or more users are editing a document at the same time, it saves the document for everyone once in a while (every minute or so), and whoever is the last one to make changes at the time of “save” – that user name is registered in the version history for that modified document.

MAXIMUM Recommended CO-AUTHORING

As per the Software boundaries and limits for SharePoint 2013 This property only applies to Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and Microsoft Word documents.

Recommended maximum number of concurrent editors is 10. The boundary is 99. If there are 99 co-authors who have a single document opened for concurrent editing, each successive user sees a "File in use" error, and can only open a read-only copy.

More than 10 co-editors will lead to a gradually degraded user experience with more conflicts, and users might have to go through more iterations to successfully upload their changes to the server.

There is no upper limit to the number of users who can co-author Microsoft OneNote notebooks.