# Co-Authoring And AutoSave If you work with Microsoft Office documents you are no doubt aware of the co-authoring and autosave capabilities of Office. Co-authoring enables collaborative work with your colleagues; permitting multiple users to work on the same Office document at the same time. AutoSave will save your changes as you go without the need to hit the Save button. When opening Office documents from File Explorer via a double-click, and assuming that your space.vars.PRODUCT\_NAME administrator has enabled the feature on your space.vars.PRODUCT\_NAME subscription, the documents will open with co-authoring and AutoSave enabled.

Double click an Office document in File Explorer to open it for co-authoring and AutoSave

You can tell if co-authoring and AutoSave are enabled on your document by observing if the AutoSave slider is set to On:

If the slider is in the Off position then co-authoring and AutoSave are not enabled on the document. The document will instead be opened for exclusive editing. This means the document will be locked exclusively for you whilst you have the document opened; other users cannot edit the document, they can only open the document for reading.

If AutoSave is in the Off position, then other users opening your document will see a dialog similar to this. They cannot edit the document, only view it. After you close the document, the exclusive lock is released automatically by `space.vars.PRODUCT_NAME`

When you make a change to a document where the AutoSave slider is in the off position, the document will not save until you click the save button in Office. After you close the document, the lock will be released and another user can then open the document for editing. {% hint style="warning" %} If the AutoSave slider is in the Off position, do not slide it over to the On position. This is not the correct approach to open an Office document for co-authoring and AutoSave when it has been opened from a space.vars.PRODUCT\_NAME network drive {% endhint %} If your Office document does not open for co-authoring and AutoSave when you double click to open it from File Explorer, but you would like to open it for co-authoring, you can still elect do so via the File Explorer context menu. Right click on the Office document in File Explorer to pop open the context menu, expand the space.vars.PRODUCT\_NAME sub-menu then click the option "Open this document for co-authoring":

Your document should now open in Office with the AutoSave slider set to the On position. {% hint style="info" %} Office documents will not open with co-authoring and AutoSave enabled if you open the document from the Office Open File dialog. AutoSave will be in the Off position and the document will open for exclusive editing instead. If you want to open the document for co-authoring and AutoSave, locate the document in Windows File Explorer and open it from there via a double click {% endhint %} If you have previously opened an Office document with co-authoring and AutoSave enabled, then you can continue to open it for co-authoring and AutoSave from your Office "Recent" or "Pinned" lists.

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