In May, Microsoft announced plans to introduce real time co-authoring of documents while using the free Office Web Apps. This week, Microsoft released a new video showing this upcoming feature in action, along with a blog post that talks more about this long requested addition.
The official Office blog states that the real time co-authoring feature does not matter if the user is accessing Office Web Apps on Windows, iOS or Android platforms. The blog adds:
The fact for example that in Excel users will be able to co-author at a cell level and output charts and analysis real-time goes beyond even typical desktop usage scenarios today.
The blog also says that people who want to try out the co-authoring features right now and are signed up to use either SkyDrive or SharePoint Online, can go ahead and use PowerPoint in Office Web Apps for some real time creation experiences.
So far, Microsoft has yet to give a time frame when the full co-authoring real time features will be added to Office Web Apps. Last week, the company added Office to iOS devices if users have a current Office 365 subscription and are based in the US.
Source: Microsoft