Going “Kamping with a K”: How we quickly organized a 20-person trip in Web Excel on SkyDrive

This week we continue to highlight new features we've recently released in Web Excel, available to all users through SkyDrive. This post is brought to you by Lee Bizek, a Program Manager in the Excel Team.

My wife, Korrin, and I go camping every year with our closest friends. Since she isn’t a fan of camping without running water or power, we make the trek over to a friend’s cabin where we have all of the amenities of normal living--hence the term “Kamping with a K.”

This variety of camping requires a bit more orchestration, so every year we need to organize who’s going to make it, when people are coming and going, who’s cooking what meal and what “Kamping necessities” people are bringing to the cabin. Not everyone has an Outlook, Live or Hotmail email account so we’ve had to email the file around, collect the information, update our master copy and then send out a final version before the camping weekend.

With the announcement of easier collaboration on SkyDrive, things just got a WHOLE LOT EASIER! Now we can share a link with all of our friends to the one file and they can edit the workbook without needing to sign in with a Microsoft account, even at the same time!

Here’s how we’ll do it.

How to Share

First we need to upload or create the file on SkyDrive. Once the file is there, we can we can access the sharing dialog window from SkyDrive, within Web Excel or even Desktop Excel, if you’re editing the file from SkyDrive.

From SkyDrive:

1. Locate the file.
2. Check the box in the upper right corner of the file tile.
3. In the top menu, select Sharing.

Note: More information on sharing in SkyDrive can be found here.

From Web Excel:

There are two ways to get to the sharing dialog. Here is one way:

1. On the Home tab click the Share button.
2. Select Share with People.

Here is the second option:

1. Access the backstage from the File menu.
2. Select Share.
3. Click Share with People.

In Desktop Excel, follow these steps:

1. Access the backstage from the File menu.
2. Select Share.
3. Select Get a Sharing Link.

Sharing Options

There are two options we can use to share the workbook.

Post to Facebook or other social network: We didn't use this option in our example because we want to send the link to specific people, but this option does post a link to the file on Facebook so all of your Facebook friends can edit the workbook anonymously. Other social networks, like Twitter, are available from the Add services dropdown options.

Get a link / View and edit: Allows you to create a View and Edit link that you can copy and paste into any form of communication, such as an email, instant message, or Word document.

Editing

Anonymous edit links go to View mode by default. To start editing the document click EDIT IN BROWSER.

Note: The user who clicked on the link is not signed in and is editing as Guest.

We’re really looking forward to our camping trip this year, especially now that it’s easier to organize our trip!

If you would like to use our file as a template for planning your own trip with friends we've attached it to this post for you to download.

You can find out more about sharing from SkyDrive here.

Happy sharing!

--Lee Bizek, Excel Program Manager