Below are some screen shots of what you’ll see if you try to simultaneously edit a document in SharePoint 2010:

Word

Word will only let multiple people edit a document at the same time if you’re using the full client.  In the Word 2010 web app, the second person will get this error:

PowerPoint

PowerPoint will only let multiple people edit a presentation at the same time if you’re using the full client.  In the PowerPoint 2010 web app, the second person will get this error:

Excel

The Excel 2010 web app is the most advanced web application and allows multiple users to edit a spreadsheet at the same time.  Other users will see changes as they are made by someone.  If two users try to edit a cell at the same time, then the second edit will be the one that saves.

The Excel web app is shown in the screen shot below.

In the bottom-right, the web app tells you how many users are currently editing the spreadsheet.

Surprisingly, the Excel desktop client cannot participate in simultaneous editing.  This collaboration feature is only available from the web app.

OneNote

The OneNote web app does allow simultaneous editing, however edits should be limited to separate pages.  As long as users are working on separate pages, they will see updates that someone else made when clicking on the page.  When we tried to edit the same page between several users however, we were presented with “conflicting changes” errors as shown below, with the only option being to delete the page.

The simultaneous editing features in Office 2010 open up a lot of possibilities for collaboration, however it’s disappointing that only Excel can fully utilize it in the web application.  Our hope is that the next version of Office will fully support multi editing in both the web apps and the client versions.

After installing the Office Web Apps, the first thing you’ll notice is a few new options when accessing the context menu of a document in SharePoint 2010.  The new options include View in Browser, Edit in Browser, and Edit in Microsoft Word.

SharePoint 2010 with Office Web Apps

Clicking on Edit in Microsoft Word will simply launch the version of Word that you have installed locally on your workstation.  But what if you don’t have Word installed?  What if you are on a hotel kiosk computer or a netbook?  In that case, you can click on Edit in Browser to access the Word 2010 Web App.  This will open the document for editing with your browser.  This is designed to work in IE, Firefox, and Safari; but will require the SilverLight plug-in to be installed for the best user experience.

The look and feel of the Word 2010 Web App is quite impressive.  There are navigation links across the top of the browser that can take you back to Client or Matter sites if you have those.  There is also the Office Ribbon Bar built right-in, and a link to launch the document with the locally installed Word client.    Tired of working with the current browser window?  Simply click the Pop-Out icon, highlighted in red in the upper right of the document, to open a new browser window without all the other browser toolbars cluttering the view.

Word 2010 Web App

Until Office 2010 is officially released, you will need to edit the document in the browser using the Word 2010 Web App if you want to take advantage of the simultaneous editing feature.    It will also be interesting to see which other features of the full Word 2010 product Microsoft incorporates into the Web App — Document Comparison?  Track Changes?    We’ll keep our ears to the wall.