Document Workspaces

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Use Document Workspaces to simplify the process of co-authoring, editing, and reviewing documents with others in real-time through Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, or Microsoft Office Visio 2003. A Document Workspace site is a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services site that is centered around one or more documents. People can easily work together on the document— either by working directly on the Document Workspace copy or by working on their own copy, which they can update periodically with changes that have been saved to the copy on the Document Workspace site.

Typically, you create a Document Workspace when you use e-mail to send a document as a shared attachment. As the sender of the shared attachment, you become the administrator of the Document Workspace, and all the recipients become members of the Document Workspace, where they are granted permission to contribute to the site. Another common way to create a Document Workspace is to use the Shared Workspace task pane (Tools menu) in a Microsoft Office 2003 program.

When you use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Visio to open a local copy of the document on which the Document Workspace is based, the Office program periodically gets updates from the Document Workspace and makes them available to you. If the changes to the workspace copy conflict with changes you've made to your copy, you can choose which copy to keep. When you are finished editing your copy, you can save your changes to the Document Workspace, where they are available for other members to incorporate into their copy of the document.