Better Coauthoring Tools in Office 2010

7 August 2009 at 2:44 am Peter G. Klein 6 comments

| Peter Klein |

Despite several highly rewarding coauthoring relationships I do write some papers by myself. One problem with coauthored papers and presentations, as you probably know, is version confusion: Am I editing the latest version? Is one of my coauthors editing the same version at the same time? Did I remember to accept or reject her changes before working on mine? As the number of coauthors increases to three or even four, these coordination problems multiply.

According to WWD the new version of Office includes much better coauthoring tools:

Word 2010, OneNote 2010, and PowerPoint 2010 now include a co-authoring feature, enabling multiple authors to work on the same document at the same time. This is a welcome change from having to use SharePoint, where only one author at a time can check a document out for editing. The addition of co-authoring is really ratcheting Office 2010’s collaboration options.

In related news, the newest version of Skype allows you to share your desktop with a colleague, which might be another good way to make slides for a joint presentation.

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6 Comments Add your own

1. Warren Miller | 7 August 2009 at 11:21 am

Despite those encomiums, Peter, I still long for the days of WordPerfect. Formatting complex documents without “Reveal Codes” is a prescription for tedium, hours of wasted time, and, for me, just plain anger that such rotten software can dominate the market. Had the Bush II people not been so clueless about antitrust, esp. illegal tying between MS’s rotten operating system and its rotten software, Word never would have achieved dominance. Even Bob Bork signed on with the Justice Dept. when it went after MS. Too bad our regulators don’t have the spine that, at least on this one issue, the Europeans have. But MS’s day is coming. Ask Google.

On a brighter note, the awfulness of Microshaft’s products has created a regiment of Word consultants. We are fortunate to have found a lovely woman in Alabama who is a veritable Word encyclopedia. For us, using her, which we invariably do when we’re stuck, is about opportunity cost; here’s her bio. She’s terrific and responsive. My only downside with her is that she doesn’t use HTML format in her e-mail. But that’s a small price to pay to get solutions for problems that would never exist in WordPerfect.

And, for anyone who might want to defend Word by saying that it uses Reveal Codes because the phrase is in its (non-)Help screens, please don’t waste your time. That, like so many other assertions made by the Gates-Ballmer Thugocracy over the years, is palpable nonsense. It is misleading, at best; more likely, it’s a flat-out lie. It ranks right up there with this charmer. Asserting that Word has Reveal-Codes capability is like saying that a fish can ride a bicycle.
2. Peter Klein | 7 August 2009 at 4:51 pm

Warren, while I don’t share your overall opinion of Microsoft (or antitrust), I too am a WordPerfect fan and was a longtime WP user before switching to Word to take advantage of network effects.
3. Lasse | 8 August 2009 at 8:30 am

Hah! they’ll never develop something to keep me from messing up the versions. Not in a million years.
4. CM Hsieh | 14 August 2009 at 8:51 pm

Doesn’t Google Docs help out enough in situations where multiple co-authors want to work on papers together?
5. Bo | 18 August 2009 at 3:25 pm

Hey fish do ride bicycles….
6. Bo | 18 August 2009 at 3:25 pm

Hey fish do ride bicycles….