Opening a shared document in Excel Online

Hi,

I've shared an excel spreadsheet with two others. I work on a mac; they both work in Windows. I expected them to be able to open and edit the document with Excel Online without downloading Box edit. Neither of them, however, sees an option to edit the document online--only to download it. Have I mistaken the functionality? Done something wrong in my settings? Please help!

Thanks, Jan

Hi ,

Thanks for your post in Box Community!

It seems you sent the other users a Shared link instead of inviting them as Collaborators. Creating and sending them a shared link will only give them the option to view and download the file.

If you need others to be able to open and edit a file using excel online, they have to be invited in a Collaboration with at least an editor access and they will need to install Box Edit. Check out these support articles for more information on this:

• Opening and Editing Files with Box Edit
• Inviting Collaborators

Hope this helps clarify the issue! 

  Also make sure you have an .xlsx; Excel Online won't work with .xls

--Kurt Baker

Penn State University

Thanks. It makes sense to me that I erred in not inviting them as full collaborators, but I am not clear why they need to install Box Edit to edit online. My recollection (though I am a very early Box user, so things may have changed) was that you only needed Box Edit to edit documents locally on your PC and have them sync.

In addition, both of these users previously had a corporate account, which we abandoned because Box doesn't support synching both to individual and corporate accounts, and Box won't let them be named as collaborators because they have expired corporate accounts.

I am frustrated right now, quite deeply!

Thank you. I think I'm ok on that front as the original document is a .xlsx file--unless Box does some sort of transform when you're in the online version...

Hi ,

If your users are not logged into a Box account that has been invited to collaborate, then they will not be able to make an edit with Box Edit. If they're accessing through a shared link, they'll only have the option to download. The only file that you can edit a file if not fully invited would be a BoxNote, so if it's an excel spreadsheet, they need to be able to have access to the folder to upload a new version.

 If both users have previous accounts associated with their email address that they need to purge or remove, our support team can help with that easily. You can contact them here with this link.

I hope that clarifies and makes it easier to share it with your colleagues.

I am also looking to do this: have multiple people edit the excel spreadsheet online.  Is this possible?

Solved.  They have to be established as collaborators,

thanks!

d