Coauthoring Word 2010 and PowerPoint 2010 Documents Stored in SharePoint 2010

To test coauthoring, two computers or virtual images with Word 2010 installed are required along with a document library housed in a SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 site collection. Make sure that Require Documents to Be Checked Out Before They Can Be Edited is not enabled in Document Library settings Versioning Settings, because documents that are checked out cannot take advantage of coauthoring. Enable major and minor versioning to review the number of versions that were created once the exercise is complete.

Follow these steps to test coauthoring:

1.	From Computer A (used by User1 in this example), navigate to the SharePoint 2010 document library (http://abcsp1004/sites/Chapter25/Shared Documents in this example). Hover over a document and select Edit in Microsoft Word from the drop-down menu. If needed, click OK to the standard warning.
2.	After the document opens in Word, click the Enable Editing button under the Ribbon if needed.
3.	From Computer B (used by User2 in this example), navigate to the same SharePoint document library, hover over the same document, and select Edit in Microsoft Word from the drop-down menu. If needed, click OK to the standard warning.
4.	After the second document opens in Word, click the Enable Editing button under the Ribbon if needed.
5.	Start editing the document from Computer A (for example, perform a find and replace of a word that appears multiple time in the document to make a number of changes) and notice that along the bottom of the Word document in the status bar, an icon will indicate that there are two people editing the document, as shown in Figure 1. Click the icon, and it will reveal the identities of the coauthors. Figure 1. Viewing the identities of coauthors in Word 2010.
6.	Switch over to Computer B and note that the sections that were changed by the other user are marked with the username (in this example, User1, as shown in Figure 2). Note in the status bar along the bottom that a message reads “This modification is not allowed because the selection is locked.” Figure 2. Error message if attempting to edit content modified by a coauthor in Word 2010.
7.	Switch back to Computer A and click the Save button in the upper left, or if not available click the File tab and click Save, as shown in Figure 3. Note that the icon looks different than normal, and has a double arrow in it. This signifies that synchronization with multiple users will taking place upon the completion of the save. Figure 3. Synchronizing changes by saving in Coauthor mode in Word 2010.
8.	Switch to Computer B and try to edit a marked section, and note that the same message appears in the status bar.
9.	Click Save from Computer B, and a message will appear stating “Word has refreshed your document with changes made by other authors. To compare the document with a previous version, click the File tab.” Click OK to close the message. The changes made by the other user will be outlined in a different color to show the changes.
10.	Close both documents.
11.	Access the version history for the document and note that two versions were created as a result of these edits.

Additional testing with multiple users is recommended, for both Word 2010 and PowerPoint 2010. Users will soon learn that they need to perform a Save frequently to make sure they share their edits with their coauthors, and allow their coauthors to edit the sections they have changed.

Administrators should be aware that there are a number of settings that can be made with PowerShell that will perform the following changes. The following bullets list the page titles that provide the PowerShell code on the Microsoft TechNet site. Searching on these titles will bring up the pages and further instructions:

• “Configure the Co-authoring Versioning Period”— The coAuthoringVersionPeriod property determines how often SharePoint stores a version of a document that is being edited on a specific server. This is measured in minutes, and if set to zero, every change made by a new user in a different version of the document will result in a new version of the document. If the value is set to a number that exceeds the amount of editing time by a user, SharePoint Server will create just one version for the editing session.

• “Configure the Maximum Number of Co-authoring Authors”— The CoauthoringMaxAuthors property limits the maximum number of authors that can coauthor a Word or PowerPoint file at the same time on a specific server.

• “Disable Co-authoring”— The DisableCoauthoring server property disables coauthoring for Word and PowerPoint documents on a specific server.