5.1. Getting Started with Excel and SharePointIf you've ever tried to collaborate on a budget, project bid, or other team-oriented workbook in Excel, you know that just putting the . XLS file up on a public server doesn't cut it. Only one person can edit the workbook at a time, and if somebody leaves the file open and goes to lunch , the rest of the team is locked out until you find out who the culprit is and get him to close his session. Earlier versions of Excel solved this problem with shared workbooks , which let more than one user have a single workbook open for editing. Changes were merged automatically, and conflicting changes could be resolved. That's a start, but it's a file-based system, so there is no way to manage the document's users, notify teammates of changes, assign tasks , or do other team-oriented work. SharePoint solves this problem through shared workspaces and shared lists. From an Excel perspective, shared workspaces represent a workbook shared with team members ; shared lists are ranges of cells shared through a SharePoint site. Figure 5-1 illustrates the difference. animal 5-1. Sharing workbooks and parts of workbooks as listsBefore you begin using SharePoint in Excel, you'll need:
Next, take these preliminary steps from Internet Explorer:
You're almost ready to start sharing workbooks and lists from Excel using SharePoint. How you do each of those things is different so, first-things-first, let's talk about sharing an Excel workbook by creating a SharePoint workspace. |