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Does on-premise Sharepoint 2016 offer real-time document co-authoring in desktop versions of Office (Word, Excel)?

I've tried to do research but couldn't find convincing answer.

  1. Collaborate on Word documents with real-time co-authoring - support.office.com -

First you save the document to OneDrive or SharePoint Online, so others can work in it.

So it looks like this option is not available in onpremise Sharepoint 2016.

  1. Word 2016 co-authoring fails when file is stored on SharePoint 2013 - support.microsoft.com -

This feature is available only for processing documents that are stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive. Real-time Co-authoring is not available in SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint 2010.

Again looks like this feature is not available for onpremise, but last sentence doesn't mention Sharepoint 2016, so I don't know if this article is just a little bit outdated or real-time co-authoring works in onpremise.

  1. SharePoint 2016 on-premises real-time co-authoring - social.technet.microsoft.com

The same question as mine and someone from Microsoft answers that this feature is available in onpremise 2016 and as an evidence he links to site which clearly says:

Co-authoring with Excel and real-time co-authoring in Word and PowerPoint are supported in OneDrive and SharePoint Online >>only<<. When you store Excel documents on SharePoint server or any documents locally on your computer, you >>won't be able<< to co-author.

So what is the right answer? I'm asking about real-time (similar to Office Online).

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2 Answers 2

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Yes, you can co-author documents stored in SharePoint 2016 using either Office 2013 or Office 2016. Here's a screen capture from a demo I do in my upcoming SharePoint 2016 Fundamentals course for Pluralsight.

Document co-authoring

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  • Rob, do you know if it is regular co-authoring or real-time coauthoring? (With the distinction as defined here being that regular co-authoring shows authors an "updates available" button to refresh after someone else saves, but real-time co-authoring shows authors the new text as others type.)
    – Thriggle
    Commented Jun 15, 2017 at 17:39
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    From what I've seen it's regular co-authoring.
    – Rob Windsor
    Commented Jun 15, 2017 at 19:41
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    It has been my experience that Sharepoint 2016 on premises does not support realtime coauthoring like Office 365 in the cloud does. (cursor position flags like Google Docs) This is a shame- I'm told that MS deliberately lags the feature introduction into the Sharepoint product to try to coax users into the cloud, but there's suspiciously little documentation on this feature or topic in general from MS. It's very frustrating to those of us with constraints to stay on premises only not to have this capability. Would love to hear when this feature is scheduled to arrive in Sharepoint or if I'm ju
    – user2714173
    Commented Aug 25, 2017 at 16:44
  • Rob, was the file being stored at OneDrive for business in SharePoint on-premise, or SharePoint team site? (This is not an answer. I'm sorry I don't know how to delete it.)
    – Harryi
    Commented Sep 1, 2017 at 12:11
  • In the example I describe above the document was stored in a document library in a team site.
    – Rob Windsor
    Commented Sep 1, 2017 at 13:15
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https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/3100925/word-2016-co-authoring-fails-when-file-is-stored-on-sharepoint-2013

It says: "Status This problem was fixed in with this update October 13, 2015, update for Office 2016 (KB2920679)"

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  • You can simply mention excerpts from link and then quote the links as reference.
    – John Zachariah
    Commented Oct 14, 2017 at 15:57

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