Sharing Documents In Office Web Apps

You have the ability in Office Web Apps to share particular documents by editing their permissions. Office Web Apps make use of the folder system that you usually see in Windows Explorer and you can give people access to a whole folder. If a file exists in a folder, the file’s permissions are inherited from that folder. In this case, you can’t grant access to just that individual file. Instead, you must grant access to the entire folder, and thus all the files within that folder.

If the file does not exist in a folder, that’s another matter completely!

Let’s explore! Find a file that exists in a folder. When you hover over it, you should be able to see an option to Share. Click on that and then select Edit permissions.

The Permissions page for that file displays the message that the file’s permissions come from those of the parent folder, as we expected.

Now find a file that doe not exist in a folder, hover over it and click Share > Edit permissions. This time, we are presented with an Edit permissions page with a “who can access this” slider.

You can give access to certain groups of people by dragging the slider upwards. When you give access to friends (some or all), you can also specify whether they can edit or only view the file.

Additionally, you can give access to your file to an individual person by entering their email address in the “add specific people” input box at the bottom. Click Save when you have completed your changes. If you have added an individual’s email address, you will be prompted to type in an optional message to send to them.