New SkyDrive updates make sharing Office docs easier

Today's post is by Jenni French, product manager on the Office Web Apps team.Share Office docs on social networks

Earlier this autumn, we shipped enhancements to Office Web Apps based on your feedback, delivering new features such as the ability to view ink in OneNote Web App, merge and autofit cells in Excel Web App, and print directly from the browser in Excel Web App. Today, the SkyDrive team is announcing some updates that are also based on your requests. Today’s SkyDrive updates will make it easier than ever to share and collaborate on Office documents using Office Web Apps on SkyDrive.

With today’s SkyDrive improvements, you can share individual files stored on SkyDrive, not just folders. Also, you can easily collaborate on Office documents through SkyDrive with anyone, even if you don’t know their Windows Live ID. You can even share directly with friends on Facebook and LinkedIn. Or you can share a document with everyone, by setting permissions to make it public and creating a link that you can send or share, or embed in your own blog or website.

Simpler sharing from Office Web Apps on SkyDrive

To share the document you’re working on, just click Share in the toolbar, and then you can enter your friends’ email addresses, a short message, and give permission to edit or require sign-in, all in one place!

Share a doc link in email

The people who you’ve shared it with will receive an invitation almost immediately, sent from you, with a link that they can click to view your document.

Email recipients get a link to your doc

Right-click to share Office docs from SkyDrive

Here’s another time-saver: With this update, the SkyDrive team has added right-click menus on the file list, allowing you to view, edit, download, and more.

New right-click commands on files in SkyDrive

Share your Office docs on social networks

In addition to sharing via email, now you can share your Office documents through social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. This is exciting, because it means that you can show off your Office documents with your friends in Facebook, or collaborate with colleagues in LinkedIn.

To post your Office documents to a social network, click Share in the navigation, and then click Post to.

Post your docs to your social networks

Share an Office doc with everyone

In addition to sharing your Office documents with specific friends and colleagues, you can upload a document and share it with everyone, and then get a link that you can post or send to make your document public. You can also choose to set permissions so only friends you’ve shared it with can see it, or you can make it public for anyone on the web to see.

To make your document public, click Share, and then click Get a Link.

Create a public link to your doc

Embed your Office doc in your blog or website

If you have a blog or a website, you can embed your Excel or PowerPoint document directly into another web page.

To embed an Office document from SkyDrive, right-click the document, click Embed, and then click Generate to get HTML code that you can paste into your blog or website.

Embed your doc in your blog or web page

See it in action with Doug from Office Casual

Want to see what these improvements look like in action? Watch this video, from Doug on the Office Casual blog...or try them for yourself, just sign in to SkyDrive to get started!

I hope you’ll enjoy using these new features! And please do let us know what you think, in comments below or through the product, because we’re always listening…

Thanks,
 
--Jenni French
Sr. Product Manager, Office Web Apps


 

Office Blogs Comments

Comments: (57) Collapse

  • I definitely think this is a step in the right direciton, especially with being able to move multiple files and folders around at the same time.  However, the only thing preventing me from using this all the time is the inability to upload entire folders from the desktop to the computer.

    I currently have all my files saved to a hard drive, and I would really like to start saving everything to the cloud.  Being able to link windows live mesh with Skydrive would be awesome too because it would sync everything to the cloud and my hard drive, similar to Dropbox.  This would be a plus too since windows mobile phones now can sync directly to Skydrive for "on the go" productivity.

  • Yes saving / syncing to the cloud is getting easier and more seamless across Microsoft services -- phone, PC, and browser. As we say around here, we're all in :-)

  • Sorry to hear that you couldn't access your SharePoint site with your Windows Phone 7.5. I know that the Windows phone does work with SharePoint 2010, so maybe it's time for an upgrade :-)

    Here's a KB article that walks through the process of accessing SharePoint 2010 via Windows Phone: support.microsoft.com/.../982590

  • actually some disadvantages for doc. :

    1- u could not able to protect your doc.from downloading which is not fixed in like view, update or edit so, can I prevent download document and make it just for view.

    2-In excel sheet u could not protect cell  so, u should  clear  cell protection to accept skydrive the uploading.

  • I am looking for documentation on the excel web app with regards to pivot tables. Is it still at the stage where we have to create them on our desktop, but allow them to be used within the Excel Web app? Or if your spreadsheet has a pivot table, will it even open up?

  • PivotTables are created in the Excel desktop program, but you can use them (expand/collapse, sort, filter) in the Web App.

  • Public docs are just that: public, meaning they can be downloaded. Similar to a picture on a web page: you can't alter the image on the page, but you can save your own copy of the picture. True, if you want to share a spreadsheet in Excel Web App, turn off cell protection first.

  • excel progoram you can use

  • Very usful but still lacks inportant funshants that are needed. In word web app there needs to be a way to incert a time and date as well as a page nubmber which you do not have in web apps which i use alot which needs to be done soon.

  • In all honesty I haven't read through all these comments, nor have I played around with Excel too much but I was wondering if there is chart editing options available on the web app similar to what's available on the desktop application? The options seem limited, i.e. I cannot set the min/max ranges for vertical and horizontal axes. I'm sure there are limitations in the web but I was wondering if these options are available and if not, when would they be (if this is something Microsoft will be working on)?

  • That's awesome!!

  • That's awesome!!

  • Can not imagine any job or any computer without Office

    Thank you very much for the office

  • A new experience for me I am excited about having this to use thank you office for this wonderful methods created to communicate more effortlessly this is fabulous!

  • woow it's cool........ applikasi ini dapat mewujudkan harapan "dunia dalam genggaman" kita. berbagi untuk menambah wawasan dan membuat keputusan yang cepat dan sempurna. dengan ini manusia diuntungkan dengan memperkuat persaudaraan dan pertemanan. selamat

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