Audience: Franklin University Staff and Faculty.
Disclaimer: The results and functionality of the following article only apply to the audience listed above.
Your team can share Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft Office document types. Shared documents can be stored in Teams, SharePoint, or shared through OneDrive. To work on these documents with other members of your team, it is beneficial to understand the different methods for opening the shared document.
1. How to open shared documents in Teams
A document in Teams can be opened directly in the Teams application. Such shared documents can be found pinned to a post, pinned atop a channel, or searched for using the Teams search feature. Please keep in mind that while the document is "in" Teams, there is actually a SharePoint back-end behind Teams storage. Therefore, when using the search feature in Teams, it will search your entire team/department SharePoint site for documents with the title or keywords. The Teams version of the Microsoft Office application utilizes a light version of an application (such as Word, Excel, and so on). Therefore, some functionality and features of the application may be missing from the ribbon, when compared to the full software installed on your computer.
2. How to open documents using the online version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or other Office 365 application
When opening a document from a SharePoint site, the document may open in your browser. In that case, you are technically not opening the document using the software on your computer. For example, when opening a Microsoft Word document in your browser from SharePoint, your computer doesn't utilize the full installed version of Microsoft Word. Instead, an online version of the application that runs in your browser is utilized. The online version works almost entirely the same as the software version. However, some features and advanced functions may be missing from the ribbon.
3. Opening the application in the full version of the software
When working on a shared document, you may wish to utilize the full version of the Office software installed on your computer. From OneDrive, the document will likely open in the full version of the application. From SharePoint or Teams, you can open a document from a shared location in the full software by clicking on the button that states "Open in Excel" or "Open in Word" and so on.
Once opened in the full version, you can often find the document in the recently opened documents within the Open menu.
Warning: When using Excel in the full version, the document can become locked for other users or even yourself.
How to avoid this error
If you are opening a document that is often used by your team, the easiest way to avoid the message above would be to only open the document using the online version or Teams version of Excel, rather than using the full application. [see above for further explanation of online and Teams versions of applications]
Right click on shared/Team document to View it's online location. Alternatively, you can open the document in Teams.
[when opening from OneDrive or Synced folder location]
[when opening from online SharePoint view]
When the full desktop application is needed, please make sure to close save your changes and close the document when not actively working on it.
When encountering a locked document
You can get others to close their instance of the spreadsheet. However, sometimes Microsoft Office365 will not recognize this document as closed. Therefore, it may take time between the document being closed, and you being able to open it.
You can also download a version of the document. However, changes made will only be saved locally (where-ever you save the file). The changes will not be made to the original document.