Hello, Insiders! My name is Meenakshi Naren and I am a Product Manager on the Excel team. I am super excited to introduce you to Excel Live, the new collaboration meeting experience for worksheets in Teams.
Excel Live for Teams
Up until now, sharing worksheets during a meeting has been a fairly one-sided experience. You share your screen, and everyone else watches while you move through worksheets in the workbook, and make your changes and updates. That works well when you’re just looking to convey information to others, but not if you’re looking to collaborate in real time.
In response to the evolution of the hybrid work environment and the need to have more robust ways to engage and collaborate, we’ve created Excel Live! This enhanced collaboration solution makes your meetings more engaging and productive when working with Excel workbooks.
With Excel Live, the Teams meeting window now becomes a canvas, allowing all participants to work together. Participants can follow along with the presenter and interact with and edit the workbook—all without ever leaving the meeting screen.
How it works
- Join the Teams meeting in which you want to collaborate with others.
- To share an existing workbook, click the Share button in the meeting window in Teams, scroll down to the Excel Live section in the Share content pane, and then select the workbook you want to share.
- To confirm that you want to share the selected workbook, click the Share button.
After sharing access, everyone invited to the meeting will have access to the workbook. They can interact with and edit the Excel file in real time.
Scenarios to try
- Share a workbook through Share tray in Teams meeting and collaborate. Open an existing workbook in Excel for the web that you want you share. Click the Share button in the upper-right corner of the window, and then click Work Together in Teams. The workbook will be shared in the active Teams meeting.
- Open an existing workbook in Excel for the web that you want you share. Click the Share button in the upper-right corner of the window, and then click Work Together in Teams. The workbook will get shared in the active Teams meeting.
- Join a meeting from an Android or iOS phone or tablet and participate in Excel Live meeting from your device. Follow along with the presenter, interact with colleagues, and sort/filter worksheet content from your mobile device.
- You can also try the Sync to Presenter option on your mobile device, which will take you to the presenter’s view. Click the Sync to Presenter button to see changes made by the presenter and follow along with their actions in real-time.
Known Limitations
- Meeting room devices are not supported.
- Recording of Live content is not supported.
Requirements
- Be using an Office 365 E3/A3, Office 365 E5/A5, or Microsoft 365 for Government license.
- Have the latest Teams desktop app installed.
- Store the workbooks you want to share on OneDrive for Business or SharePoint.
Availability
To try the feature:
- IT admins need to set an update policy that turns on Show preview features. Learn how at Public preview in Microsoft Teams.
- Users need to join the Public preview individually. See Get early access to new Teams features for instructions
If you’re an Office Insider, follow the instructions above to get the feature enabled.
Don’t have it yet? It’s probably us, not you.
Features are released over some time to ensure things are working smoothly. We highlight features that you may not have because they’re slowly releasing to larger numbers of Insiders. Sometimes we remove elements to further improve them based on your feedback. Though this is rare, we also reserve the option to pull a feature entirely out of the product, even if you, as an Insider, have had the opportunity to try it.
Feedback
We’d love your feedback, so please let us know how you think by choosing Help > Report a problem (bottom left corner of the Teams app window) while in a call, selecting Meetings – Excel Live in the What is this related to drop down list. Then, provide as much detail as you can in the What are you seeing box, including screenshots and/or memory trace by clicking the corresponding check boxes, and then click the Send Feedback button.
If you are in Excel Live meeting, you can also share your feedback by clicking Give feedback to Microsoft in the bottom right corner of the workbook.
Learn what other information you should include in your feedback to ensure it’s actionable and reaches the right people. We’re excited to hear from you!