The world around us is changing. If earlier remote work seemed like something completely exotic, now it is already considered par for the course: according to recent studies, it turned out that by 2020 one fifth of all Russians will work remotely. And, for example, in the United States, more than a third of all Americans are already working remotely. My remote work was usually associated with MS Word documents. (And occasionally - with presentation files.) Since the old versions of Word (at least twenty years ago), the Word text editor has had the most convenient means of reviewing and collaborative editing of documents, and in the document you can save the entire history of changes and you can always see who from the users what changes were made. By the way, in my experience, the vast majority of users (and even professional editors) have no idea that such tools exist in Word, and when they have to work together on documents, they do it the old fashioned way: they make corrections to the text on the fly and write Detailed comments in notes. In the old days, when there were no cloud services, documents were sent by email (or transferred on floppy disks) and this was not very convenient: some versions of files were lost in the process, new versions were replaced by old ones - and some of the corrections were lost. But over time, Microsoft developed two very significant ones that greatly facilitate collaboration on documents. And these innovations are as follows: an online version of the office suite MS Office, which allows you to work in the usual Word, Excel and Power Point from any computer with Internet access, and the cloud service OneDrive, with which you can easily organize the storage of documents on which you are working together , directly on the Internet: in this case, users are no longer tied to specific computers at all and can have access to the necessary documents from anywhere. Due to the nature of my work as editor-in-chief on several projects, I often have to explain in detail the scheme of joint remote work on documents to new authors, so I decided to present it all in a separate article: it will be useful for new authors, and, quite possibly, some of them. you, dear readers, will find this useful. How is this all done? First you need to register in the OneDrive cloud service, which is useful for collaboration, for archiving important data, and for remote access to your documents and media files. If you already have a Microsoft account, then you can sign in to OneDrive with this account , and if not, just create this account: for this you will need to indicate some working e-mail to which you have access. 
The principle of operation of the OneDrive cloud service is approximately the same as, for example, Dropbox: you have access to your personal storage on the Internet (on the OneDrive website) and this storage can be synchronized with the corresponding storage on your work computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone. To synchronize with the cloud, install the corresponding OneDrive application on your computer (laptop, tablet, smartphone), in which synchronization settings are made. 
You specify the folder where the OneDrive folders will be located, indicate which of them should be synchronized - and that’s it, then OneDrive will do everything on its own. OneDrive can also automatically send photos and videos that you take with your smartphone or tablet to the cloud. Free by default you are allocated 15 GB of space in the cloud, which is enough for photos and documents. However, if you use the Office 365 plan (and I have been using it literally from the first day of its appearance - it is very convenient), where for 286 rubles per month or 2874 rubles per year you are provided with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access, and you can install them for five users on five computers, five tablets and five smartphones, then with this plan, as much as 1 TB is allocated for each user in OneDrive, and you can stuff an elephant there.
My OneDrive
However, the cloud capabilities of OneDrive are convenient and useful, but now we are interested in this service primarily from the point of view of organizing collaborative remote work. And here OneDrive, of course, noticeably outperforms Dropbox, because MS Office applications are well tailored for OneDrive. And it works very, very simply. Look. For example, let’s say you created an article in MS Word. You then need to send this article to the editor (boss, colleague) so that he can make his comments and edit the article. To do this, you need to save this article not in a local folder, but in the corresponding OneDrive folder. This can be done literally in one click: in Word, when saving a document, simply select your OneDrive. (The first time you access, OneDrive will ask you to provide your account information - email and password.)
Well, then save your document, for example, in the “Office Live Documents” folder. Or you create some other folder in OneDrive for this - as is convenient for you. OneDrive integrates with Windows, and the operating system works with its folders in the same way as with local computer folders.
Now what needs to be done? Give access to this document to your editor (boss, colleague). This is done very simply. In Word, click File - General access. A window like this appears.
There, enter the address of the person(s) who should read and edit your article, then click the “Share” button.
He will receive a corresponding notification by e-mail that looks something like this.
And all the subscribers you invited will appear in your document data.
Next, your subscriber just needs to click on the link - and this article will appear for him to read in the online version of Word. 
There is a link “Edit document”: with its help you can open the document for editing in the online version or in MS Word.
It is more convenient, of course, to work with a document in Word, however, if you are on someone else’s computer, the online version may be a way out.
Article in the online editor
Whether or not to display these corrections on the screen is enabled in the corresponding menu.
The person who edits the document usually does not display all the corrections on the screen - this is inconvenient for editing. But when the author receives the document after editing, he turns on the “All corrections” mode - and perfectly sees in all the details what the editor did with his text: corrections, deletions, reformatting, and notes.
Screenshot is clickable
You can reply to comments, and you can always see who made what notes.
The author makes the required corrections, edits something there, and sends it back to the editor. He also clearly shows how the document has changed since its last editing, and the changes and additions made by the author are shown in a different color - this is very clear. (In general, each user chooses a different color for their corrections.)
Screenshot is clickable
Moreover, it is enough to select the display mode “Without corrections” - the article will be shown as it should look in its finished form. 
Similarly, a document (spreadsheet, presentation, database, schedule) may have dozens of different people working on it. MS Office will carefully record all additions and changes, and there you can always roll back to some previous versions. Moreover, the system works quite normally in multi-user mode, that is, when several people are working on a document at the same time. And you can always see who is currently working on this document with you.
The ability to edit a document may be limited: for example, some users will only be allowed to add notes, others will only be allowed to read only. You can also limit the set of styles allowed for use.
By the way, it is highly desirable to remove all revision history and comments from the final document, especially if it is intended for use by some other people. This is quite simple to do: you need to save the document under a new name and in the menu Review - Accept select "Accept all corrections and stop tracking" - then you will receive the final text (table, presentation, etc.) without any unnecessary information.
Otherwise, I know of cases when users very much regretted that they had not erased the entire history of changes in a document, and especially comments. This is somehow how remote work of several people on one document is organized. As you can see, everything is very simple, easy and convenient. Microsoft account, using OneDrive, using online or offline versions of MS Office, tracking changes, different types of viewing changes. And your joint work on documents will be extremely convenient, and you will always be able to track any steps to change the document. It seems that all these are well-known things, but, oddly enough, I very often come across the fact that when, for example, they are supposed to send me my article with some edits, people send the document without tracking the changes and I have to compare their text with mine to understand where and what they corrected. This is just crazy: why should they have turned on change tracking - and then I would have seen everything instantly?!! So don’t neglect such opportunities, they allow you to save a lot of time and very efficiently collaborate remotely on some files .
The world around us is changing. If earlier remote work seemed like something completely exotic, now it is already considered par for the course: according to recent studies, it turned out that by 2020 one fifth of all Russians will work remotely. And, for example, in the United States, more than a third of all Americans are already working remotely. My remote work was usually associated with MS Word documents. (And occasionally - with presentation files.) Since the old versions of Word (at least twenty years ago), the Word text editor has had the most convenient means of reviewing and collaborative editing of documents, and in the document you can save the entire history of changes and you can always see who from the users what changes were made. By the way, in my experience, the vast majority of users (and even professional editors) have no idea that such tools exist in Word, and when they have to work together on documents, they do it the old fashioned way: they make corrections to the text on the fly and write Detailed comments in notes. In the old days, when there were no cloud services, documents were sent by email (or transferred on floppy disks) and this was not very convenient: some versions of files were lost in the process, new versions were replaced by old ones - and some of the corrections were lost. But over time, Microsoft developed two very significant ones that greatly facilitate collaboration on documents. And these innovations are as follows: an online version of the office suite MS Office, which allows you to work in the usual Word, Excel and Power Point from any computer with Internet access, and the cloud service OneDrive, with which you can easily organize the storage of documents on which you are working together , directly on the Internet: in this case, users are no longer tied to specific computers at all and can have access to the necessary documents from anywhere. Due to the nature of my work as editor-in-chief on several projects, I often have to explain in detail the scheme of joint remote work on documents to new authors, so I decided to present it all in a separate article: it will be useful for new authors, and, quite possibly, some of them. you, dear readers, will find this useful. How is this all done? First you need to register in the OneDrive cloud service, which is useful for collaboration, for archiving important data, and for remote access to your documents and media files. If you already have a Microsoft account, then you can sign in to OneDrive with this account , and if not, just create this account: for this you will need to indicate some working e-mail to which you have access. The principle of operation of the OneDrive cloud service is approximately the same as, for example, Dropbox: you have access to your personal storage on the Internet (on the OneDrive website) and this storage can be synchronized with the corresponding storage on your work computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone. To synchronize with the cloud, install the corresponding OneDrive application on your computer (laptop, tablet, smartphone), in which synchronization settings are made. You specify the folder where the OneDrive folders will be located, indicate which of them should be synchronized - and that’s it, then OneDrive will do everything on its own. OneDrive can also automatically send photos and videos that you take with your smartphone or tablet to the cloud. Free by default you are allocated 15 GB of space in the cloud, which is enough for photos and documents. However, if you use the Office 365 plan (and I have been using it literally from the first day of its appearance - it is very convenient), where for 286 rubles per month or 2874 rubles per year you are provided with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access, and you can install them for five users on five computers, five tablets and five smartphones, then with this plan, as much as 1 TB is allocated for each user in OneDrive, and you can stuff an elephant there.
My OneDrive
However, the cloud capabilities of OneDrive are convenient and useful, but now we are interested in this service primarily from the point of view of organizing collaborative remote work. And here OneDrive, of course, noticeably outperforms Dropbox, because MS Office applications are well tailored for OneDrive. And it works very, very simply. Look. For example, let’s say you created an article in MS Word. You then need to send this article to the editor (boss, colleague) so that he can make his comments and edit the article. To do this, you need to save this article not in a local folder, but in the corresponding OneDrive folder. This can be done literally in one click: in Word, when saving a document, simply select your OneDrive. (The first time you access, OneDrive will ask you to provide your account information - email and password.)
Well, then save your document, for example, in the “Office Live Documents” folder. Or you create some other folder in OneDrive for this - as is convenient for you. OneDrive integrates with Windows, and the operating system works with its folders in the same way as with local computer folders.
Now what needs to be done? Give access to this document to your editor (boss, colleague). This is done very simply. In Word, click File - General access. A window like this appears.
There, enter the address of the person(s) who should read and edit your article, then click the “Share” button.
He will receive a corresponding notification by e-mail that looks something like this.
And all the subscribers you invited will appear in your document data.
Next, your subscriber just needs to click on the link - and this article will appear for him to read in the online version of Word. There is a link “Edit document”: with its help you can open the document for editing in the online version or in MS Word.
It is more convenient, of course, to work with a document in Word, however, if you are on someone else’s computer, the online version may be a way out.
Article in the online editor
Whether or not to display these corrections on the screen is enabled in the corresponding menu.
The person who edits the document usually does not display all the corrections on the screen - this is inconvenient for editing. But when the author receives the document after editing, he turns on the “All corrections” mode - and perfectly sees in all the details what the editor did with his text: corrections, deletions, reformatting, and notes.
Screenshot is clickable
You can reply to comments, and you can always see who made what notes.
The author makes the required corrections, edits something there, and sends it back to the editor. He also clearly shows how the document has changed since its last editing, and the changes and additions made by the author are shown in a different color - this is very clear. (In general, each user chooses a different color for their corrections.)
Screenshot is clickable
Moreover, it is enough to select the display mode “Without corrections” - the article will be shown as it should look in its finished form. Similarly, a document (spreadsheet, presentation, database, schedule) may have dozens of different people working on it. MS Office will carefully record all additions and changes, and there you can always roll back to some previous versions. Moreover, the system works quite normally in multi-user mode, that is, when several people are working on a document at the same time. And you can always see who is currently working on this document with you.
The ability to edit a document may be limited: for example, some users will only be allowed to add notes, others will only be allowed to read only. You can also limit the set of styles allowed for use.
By the way, it is highly desirable to remove all revision history and comments from the final document, especially if it is intended for use by some other people. This is quite simple to do: you need to save the document under a new name and in the menu Review - Accept select "Accept all corrections and stop tracking" - then you will receive the final text (table, presentation, etc.) without any unnecessary information.
Otherwise, I know of cases when users very much regretted that they had not erased the entire history of changes in a document, and especially comments. This is somehow how remote work of several people on one document is organized. As you can see, everything is very simple, easy and convenient. Microsoft account, using OneDrive, using online or offline versions of MS Office, tracking changes, different types of viewing changes. And your joint work on documents will be extremely convenient, and you will always be able to track any steps to change the document. It seems that all these are well-known things, but, oddly enough, I very often come across the fact that when, for example, they are supposed to send me my article with some edits, people send the document without tracking the changes and I have to compare their text with mine to understand where and what they corrected. This is just crazy: why should they have turned on change tracking - and then I would have seen everything instantly?!! So don’t neglect such opportunities, they allow you to save a lot of time and very efficiently collaborate remotely on some files .
Hello friends! Today's article is about Mail.Ru cloud storage. Let's look at how to use the cloud via the web interface:
How to upload files there and share links to them;
How to create folders and configure access to them;
How to move, rename and delete files.
How to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations directly in the cloud.
And other subtleties of use.
The beauty of any cloud storage is that it gives you additional space to store your files online.
No need to clutter up your computer again.
It’s convenient to share files with other people (just open access via a link).
And since I have a mailbox on Mile, I decided to use this storage as well. Moreover, 25 GB of memory is available for free here. Insert from 2018 - now they give 8 GB for free.
In general, this is all theory. And we will move on to practice.
Watch my video instructions for working with the Mail.Ru cloud below:
So, as you already understand, to gain access to the cloud on Mail.Ru you need to register a mailbox here. By doing this, you create your account through which you can use other Mail services, including cloud storage.
Although it is not necessary to register a mailbox, you can use Mail to log into your mail located on another service. I showed this in the video (watch from the 11th minute 46th second). Thus, your mailbox, for example on Yandex, will open in the Mail.ru interface and you will also be able to use the cloud.
To go to the cloud, being on the main page of Mail.Ru, you need to click on the “All projects” tab and select “Cloud”.
Initially, pictures and a video file are already loaded there, which you can delete. Delete files possibly in several ways. If you need to delete several files at once, mark them with a checkmark and click on the “Delete” button at the top.
Or right-click on the file and select “Delete”. Again, if you have marked several files, they will all be deleted.
And one nuance - in the Mail.ru cloud there is no recycle bin into which deleted files go, as on the same Yandex disk. From there we can restore them. We delete it from the cloud immediately!
To add files from your computer to the cloud, use the “Download” button in the upper left corner.
You can upload using the “Select files on your computer” button, or drag them into the upload window with the mouse. There is a limitation - the uploaded file size is up to 2 GB.
Next to the “Download” button we see the “Create” button. We use it for creating folders, documents (Word), tables (Excel) or presentations (power point) directly in the cloud.
If you want to organize your files in the cloud, then create special folders for them. To move file to folder, select it with a checkmark, right-click, select “Move”.
A window will open in which you can select a folder to move or immediately create a new one.
Generally, we can use the right mouse button for different actions on files– delete, move, copy, download, generate a link for other people or send by mail. It is very comfortable.
By the way, if you need download several files from the cloud at once. You select them with checkmarks and they will be automatically packed into one archive for downloading.
If you open access to a file for a while, and then want to delete this link, then select the desired file with the mouse, right-click and select “Delete link”.
All your files to which you have shared access can also be found in the “Sharing” section.
If a link to a file from the Mail.Ru cloud was shared with you, then you can download it immediately or save it to your cloud. You will have the option to specify a folder (where you want to save this file) or you can create a new folder for it.
Now a few words about setting up access to folders. You can share any folder with the ability to edit. That is, other users will also be able to add files to this folder.
To set up access to a folder, check the box and click on the “Set up access” tab.
Editing access can only be made available to individual members you invite via email.
If you are going to send an invitation to a user with a mailbox other than Mail.ru, then he will receive the invitation only if he logs into his mail via Mail. More about this Here.
This user will see the following invitation in their mailbox:
Having accepted it in his cloud, in the “Sharing” section, he will find the folder that you opened for him and will be able to add his files to it. You, in turn, will see all the changes he made in your folder.
I wish you success!
Sincerely, Victoria
“Evil Corporation” (joke) has been mastering the niche of collaboration with documents for the second decade. It all started with early versions of SharePoint, at the mention of which more experienced cats immediately begin to cry - MS SP was too specific in terms of both settings and capabilities in those distant years. Okay, let's not traumatize each other anymore with memories of that clumsy monster...
But Microsoft is persistent - work to improve the situation has been going on all this time, and on several fronts at once. As a result, we can now talk about the established infrastructure for document collaboration that Microsoft offers. It distinguishes two classes of software:
- Tools for collective access to documents, including cataloging, version control, distribution of rights and similar server features. These tools, in turn, are divided into cloud-based (OneDrive, SharePoint Online) and on-premise, that is, deployed in the customer’s own infrastructure - the SharePoint 2016 server.
- Document editing tools. These include: the desktop Microsoft Office family (also heavily redesigned recently), newly created mobile versions of Office, initially focused on collaboration with documents, and, the icing on the cake, our own implementation of the online document editing server Office Online apps (somewhat previously known under the name Office Web Apps).
As a result, we came up with the idea to tell both about these possibilities and how to install and configure all this equipment. Let's try to get to the comparison with alternative services. Since it is clear that such a longread will take a long time to write, and not everyone will be able to read it, we decided to divide it into several articles. This one is the first. And in it further we will go through the features and peculiarities that each of the Microsoft products has that provides joint editing of documents: Office Online, MS Office on desktops and the same on mobile devices. I warn you right away - there will be a lot of attention to detail and chewing on small features; the impatient reader can immediately read the “conclusions” at the end of the note, for the rest - let's go.
Office Online
Office Online Server is a rather interesting application that not everyone is well aware of. Firstly, it is an opportunity to reduce the number of licenses and installations of MS Office. Secondly, expanding the ability to access and edit a document, roughly speaking - you only need a browser. Third, this is Microsoft's best collaboration experience to date. Let's see what I mean.Word Online
Editing a document in Office Online can be done by several users at the same time, and the changes and the name of the user making the edits are immediately displayed to other co-authors. Users can edit the same section of text at the same time; there is no paragraph blocking.
Excel Online
In Excel Online, changes to a cell will only be visible to other collaborators when the first collaborator moves to the next cell. In this case, the cells are not blocked and several users can make changes at once.
PowerPoint Online
PowerPoint Online allows you to work on one slide at a time, but it's better to work on different elements, otherwise users won't see each other's real-time changes.
Desktop version of Office
The experience of collaborating on documents through Office Online is rewarding when it comes to making text edits without the need for major formatting changes. If you want to insert diagrams, smart art, table of contents, macros, format tables, use formulas, etc. here you will have to use the desktop version of the programs. You can write a separate article about the difference in functionality between the desktop version and the online one. Here we will look at the differences associated with collaboration.MS Word
When editing in the desktop version of the program, a paragraph that another user is working on is blocked.
Changes made will become visible to other co-authors only after they are saved by the author and the document is updated by other users.
Saving-updating is combined in the Save button (Ctrl+S). The presence of updates is indicated by an icon next to the author's name.
MS Excel
In the case of Excel, there is no possibility of simultaneously working on a document. We are offered to either switch to the online version -
Or stand in line -
MS PowerPoint
In contrast, in PowerPoint there is no lock or indication of an element that another user is working on. So, the only way you can tell that someone else is working on the same presentation is through the Share panel.
The presence of updates is signaled by the inconspicuous Updates Available status. The status appears only after the author saves the changes; the changes themselves appear after updating the document using Save (Ctrl+S).
Mobile devices
Microsoft Word App and Microsoft PowerPoint App
When working on Android, the paragraph or element the user is working on is not blocked and simultaneous work on it is possible, but nothing is highlighted for other collaborators. Edits are displayed without additional actions with a slight delay. The fact that someone else is working on the same element can be seen in the “Share” menu.
In the case of the IPhone, when changes are made, an update message is displayed with a prompt to Apply/Cancel.
It would be interesting to test it on Windows Phone with Windows 10. But there were no such people in the company.
Microsoft Excel App
Real time collaboration is not supported in Excel App.
conclusions
In general, the functionality of collaborative document editing from Microsoft can be considered successful, although different components implement it in different ways. The process of co-editing itself is best implemented in Office Online - this is real co-working. To the list of things that you can look at forever, I’ll add flags moving across the screen with the names of colleagues and a document that gradually fills in on itself. But, unfortunately, for full-fledged editing functionality as such, you will still have to turn to desktop versions of programs, which still require a save button, and the collaboration process is not so conveniently implemented (Excel suffers the most so far, where everything is the same remained at the check-in-checkout level).In the next post, we'll walk you through the process of deploying on-premise sharing components in your corporate infrastructure. SharePoint Farm 2016, Office Online Server, publishing - that's all. Don't switch off.
Sincerely, the Servilon.ru team Servilon.com
Tags:
- SharePoint
- Office Online
- collaboration
Very often there are situations when it is necessary to collect data from several people in one Excel file. If you all work in the same organization and you all have access to some shared network folder, then there is no problem. But what if there is no such possibility, and there is no time for consistent filling? In this case, the SkyDrive cloud service will help us, which allows you to store documents on the cloud, allow several users to work simultaneously in one document, limit access to certain people, and much more.
How will we proceed? To begin, we will create a template Excel file with a table that will need to be filled out. Then we will place the file on the SkyDrive cloud. And finally, we will send a link to the file by mail to all event participants and wait until everyone fills it out.
In our example, the table looks like this, where the key indicators are located horizontally, and the districts to which we will distribute the table are vertically.
When the file is ready, you need to save it to the cloud, to do this, click on the tab File, choose Save as –> Username in SkyDrive. Please note that to save to the cloud, you must have a Microsoft Live ID account.
Now that our file is on the cloud, we can give modification or read-only access. On the tab File choose Sharing -> Invite other people. We register the email addresses of all recipients, indicate the access level (read, change), add a couple of lines to our directive and click General access.
Recipients will receive a message similar to the following, with an attached link to the file. Please note that to open the file, the user does not need to have a copy of Excel installed on their computer, as clicking on the link will open your file using the Excel web client.
The Excel web client has reduced functionality than the desktop client, but it copes well with most everyday tasks.
Second - Publish on social networks, which makes it possible to post a link on the wall of a social network. We did not use this option in our example, since we needed to send the file to specific people, and in this case the link will be placed on the Facebook wall, so all friends will be able to edit the file.
You can do all the same operations without having Excel installed on your computer, using a browser. Just go to the SkyDrive website, where the above options are also available.
