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I'm a GNU/Linux and Free/Libre software user for about twelve years now. In the company I work I am the only one who runs GNU/Linux. It's been that way for a couple of years.

Recently a colleague showed me Excel 2013 is able to open documents that other colleagues "share" in the same time, i.e. they open the same document in the same time, modify it and every other user who has the document open is notified about changes. I guess this is what the word "shared" means, which appears in Excel title when the document is opened by more than one person.

The difference is when I open the same document in LibreCalc, it is locked and my colleague only notices as he tries to save his changes: after a couple of seconds he receives an error message saying "there is a sharing violation"...

My question is: [how] does Libre Office provide the same feature, aka Document Sharing, I guess? What I am after is about having a document opened simultaneously by multiple people in Libre Office. In previous companies I have worked with electronic document management applications, with which this problem is hindered, hence my question.

EDIT: For the record, I have Libre Office 5.0.6.3.

user
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1 Answers1

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Try clicking on Tools -> Share document to switch to collaborating mode for the document, which should unlock it for other people (I wasn't able to find this option in my LibreOffice Writer, but it is present in Calc you say you use). More details about this option and use cases are available on LibreOffice Wiki. This guide is only for LibreOffice format spreadsheets.

However, you may encounter issues because of compatibility of the formats, so it might not work at all - it was certainly not possible in LibreOffice 3.0.

OpenOffice.org locking works with the Excel application, but live sharing between the two is not possible. Two people using OpenOffice.org 3 cannot share an Excel spreadsheet: the OpenDocument spreadsheet format must be used.

I wasn't able to find any information about newer versions and have no environment to try it.

If it won't work, try checking if you have allowed Excel to LibreOffice (and reverse) file saving and loading in Tools -> Options -> Load/Save -> Microsoft Office. In the worst case you may talk to your colleagues to save the document in Open format, which then should work for the collaborating mode.

EDIT You may try to open the file in Google drive Office Compatibility Mode (according to the site you need a Chrome browser and a plugin).

In a Chrome browser by clicking the File tab, and selecting Open File. Then select the file that needs to be edited and it will open in Drive. To confirm that the file is in Office Compatibility Mode, click on the File menu in Drive. If you are in OCM, “Office Compatibility Mode” will be highlighted in blue. Google will confirm your edits are being saved to the Word file on your desktop by stating “All changes saved locally” below the title of the file in Drive.

Since Google docs can be shared and modified between multiple users, it's possible that it'll work with OCM and Microsoft Office files too (again, no environment to test it for you).

Adalee
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