Forum Discussion
SharePoint Online: Co-authoring with differing versions of Word
No, we are not using the OneDrive sync client to my knowledge.
We have been using SharePoint Online, Office 2013 within the company, and outside colleagues using Office 2016 or Office 2013.
I thought that co-authoring was possible with SharePoint online. I suspect that if differing versions of Offices are being used, there may be a conflict among the application templates. Can this be avoided by using the online versions of applications (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)?
Why doesn't Microsoft provide a simple, clear how-to and stop distributing functionality among multiple applications?
Co-authoring is one of the advanced features in Office 365.
For my customers, I have never been able to get it to work reliably with old Office versions, not to mention old file formats and old sync clients.
On the other side, it works perfectly well with Office ProPlus (the "evergreen" version) and/or Office Online apps.
Salvatore, first I want to thank you for taking the time to help me.
For the record, I am a power user and not an application administrator nor an expert.
I just realized that there is a basic premise that I don't understand.
How is Office 365 related to my desktop version of an application, like Word 2013 in my case?
I would say that Word 2013 is "partially" compatible with Office 365, meaning that it could give you access to some features of Office 365, surely the most basic, but absolutely not all of them, and in particular not the recently introduced features, for which you need the "evergreen" version, i.e. Office ProPlus.
Co-authoring is one of such features. For example, it is explicitly excluded in https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-word-2013