Editing a spreadsheet at the same time

What it is

Several people (signed-in users, guests with a link, and the agent) edit one spreadsheet at the same time, and the edits do not interfere with each other, as in Google Sheets. Nothing needs to be turned on separately.

How to use it

1. Edit as usual. Edits to different cells are all saved. Other people’s edits appear for you by themselves, without reloading the spreadsheet: only the changes arrive, not the whole spreadsheet.
2. If two people edit the same cell, the cell keeps the edit that arrived last. There is no window about the dispute.
3. If someone inserted or deleted rows or columns while you were typing, your edit goes into the same cell you were on. It moves together with the rows, and the references in formulas shift.
4. An edit in a row that someone else has already deleted, or on a deleted sheet, simply disappears, without an error.
5. Undo (Ctrl/⌘+Z) after someone else’s insertion of rows undoes your edit at its new place. If the undo history cannot be carried over (for example, someone restored a version of the spreadsheet), there is nothing to undo: the history is cleared, so that undo does not erase other people’s work.

Limits

• A window about a dispute appears only in rare cases, when the edit cannot be carried over. This happens if someone restored a version, trimmed the sheet, changed the rows on a sheet where you were editing conditional formatting, data validation, protection, a chart or a name, or if your tab has fallen behind by more than 1 000 edits.
• If someone renamed a sheet while your formula referring to that sheet had not yet been saved, the formula may refer to the old name.
• Undo steps that changed the formatting or the layout as a whole drop out of the undo history after someone else inserts or deletes rows.

If something goes wrong

What you see on the screen	Why	What to do
A bar with The spreadsheet structure changed, The sheet was changed or deleted or The changes require review, with the buttons Save my edits, Accept server version and Retry	A rare case: the spreadsheet could not carry your edit through other people’s changes	Compare the spreadsheet and choose: keep your edits, accept the spreadsheet as it is, or retry
Your value in a cell was replaced by someone else’s	The last edit stays in the cell	Enter the value again, if needed
Ctrl/⌘+Z undoes nothing	The undo history could not be carried over through other people’s changes, and it was cleared	Fix it by hand, or open Version history