how to enable editing on a protected word document

Figure 1 shows what I see in my tenant after the configuration update. Tenant ConfigurationĪfter making sure that appropriate client software is available, you can update the tenant configuration for co-authoring by going to a specific location in the Microsoft 365 compliance center to enable the feature. The Office Online apps support the new location for labeling data, as do builds of the Microsoft apps for enterprise (aka desktop Office click-to-run) from 1.20182 (Windows) and 16.47.218.0 (Mac). The change in location came about through version 1.7 of the Microsoft Information Protection SDK, specifically to support co-authoring. The biggest hurdle for some organizations is that everyone in the tenant must use recent versions of Office which support the new location for the metadata to store sensitivity label information. Microsoft details the prerequisites to make co-authoring for protected documents in this article, which I don’t intend repeating here except to draw attention to some critical points. You can’t co-author using the mobile Office apps, but then again, would you want to? The Right Version of Office

It’s early days yet but having the ability for concurrent editing of protected files with desktop apps is an important step forward for those of us who prefer desktop Office to its online counterpart.

Now available as a preview, both co-authoring and autosave work, but only if supported by the tenant configuration and if users have the right software. For this reason, the autosave feature built into Office to capture changes on an ongoing basis also didn’t work. When they edit files protected by a sensitivity label with encryption, the desktop apps take an exclusive lock to allow the apps to remove protection and then reapply it when the edit session finishes. Up to now, co-authoring was only possible when everyone uses the Office Online apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). One of the many announcements at the recent Ignite event covers co-authoring of Office files protected by a sensitivity label with encryption. No Screen Captures to Prove Co-authoring WorksĬomplex Interaction Between Office, SharePoint, and OneDrive.Complex Interaction Between Office, SharePoint, and OneDrive.

How to enable editing on a protected word document