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How to make an excel file shared with multiple users in excel 2016

July 22, 2022
10.3K Views

Excel is being used for teamwork by an increasing number of people nowadays. In the past, you could save your Excel data to send an email attachment to share an Excel workbook with someone. While quick and easy, but this method created several copies of the same excel file.

However, you may now make an Excel file, share it, and work together on workbooks. You can avoid the hassle of managing several versions of an Excel file by sharing it with other users and granting them concurrent access to the same document. Then, users can enter data, add rows and columns, modify calculations, and alter formatting thus it will save you a lot of trouble. Here are the tutorials on how to make an excel file shared.

How to make an excel file shared

Here is the tutorial on how to make an excel file shared to save an Excel worksheet to a local network location so that it may be accessed by other users and edited by them by making an excel file shared.

  1. Open the excel file that you want to make shared.

  2. Click on the review tab.

  3. Click on the share workbook option.

  1. Tick the box to give access to others.

  2. Click OK.

Save the shared excel file to share with others. Now you have made an excel file shared.

How to make an excel file shared and protect tracking of changes

If you want to make sure that no one disable the change history or remove excel file from shared mode, here is the tutorial on how to make an excel file shared while also protect tracking of changes.

  1. Open the excel file that you want to make shared and protect.

  2. Click on the review tab.

  3. Click on the share and workbook option.

  1. Set the password. Setting password is optional but it makes file more secure.

  1. Re-enter the password.

Now you can share this excel file with others in a shared mode while also protecting tracking of changes.

Limitations on excel shared files

Although making shared excel files is great way to collaborate with others but you should keep in mind that shared excel files have some limitations too such as conditional formatting, macros, merging cells, array formulas, worksheet protection and few more things. But if you want to use all the features, make sure to add them before making excel file shared as you will not be able to add them later.

You can make an excel file shared using across different platforms such as windows, mac, android and others without being online. Also the shared excel file feature is supported in 2016/2019 and other versions.

Did you learn about how to make an excel file shared? You can follow WPS Academy to learn more features of Word Document, Excel Spreadsheets and PowerPoint Slides.

You can also download WPS Office to edit the word documents, excel, PowerPoint for free of cost. Download now! And get an easy and enjoyable working experience. 

15 years of office industry experience, tech lover and copywriter. Follow me for product reviews, comparisons, and recommendations for new apps and software.