Editing Business Document Files

Edit common productivity-suite files directly in your Files.com site with an Online Editor Integration. You can co-author with other users on your site, and collaborate with share link recipients without giving them an account.

Selecting the Online Editor for Your Site

Site administrators choose which Online Editor Integration to enable for business-document files: the Files.com editor, Microsoft Office for Web, or no editing. The Files.com editor is enabled by default, and we recommend leaving it as the editor for your site.

Required Permissions

You need Full Permission for the folder containing the document you want to edit. If you do not have Full Permission, then you will be able to open the document for viewing, but not edit it.

File Locking

Online co-authoring lets people work together in the same editing session. File locks coordinate that session with other participating applications that would otherwise edit a separate copy.

The online editors and the Desktop App in Mounted Drive Mode honor these locks for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. If a document is open in an online editor, opening it through the mounted drive in a desktop application makes it read-only. While a document is open for editing through the Desktop App, the online editor prevents a separate editing session from starting.

Locks are advisory. Clients such as WinSCP, Mountain Duck, and FileZilla do not honor them, and editing directly on a remote storage provider does not join the Files.com session. Those paths can change the stored file while an online editor is working on its own copy. Coordinate those changes to avoid one copy overwriting another.

Saving Changes

An online editor works on a temporary copy of the document and saves changes back to your site's storage automatically. Changes are uploaded every 2 to 5 minutes while the document is being edited. Leaving an unchanged document open does not cause additional saves.

Any remaining changes are uploaded when the editing session closes. In a co-authoring session, closing one participant's tab does not end the session while others continue editing.

There is a short delay before an uploaded change appears in your site. Once the upload finishes, the stored file's last modified time reflects the activity, and previews and downloads use the updated version. Allow the saves to finish before treating the stored file as the final version for another transfer or review.

Activity History and Notifications

Online editing appears in file activity history with the interface shown as "Office". Creating a document records a file creation. Opening a document for preview or editing records a download because the editor retrieves it from storage. Each save back to storage records a file change.

These operations can also trigger configured folder activity email notifications: document creation and saves trigger upload notifications, while previews and opening the editor trigger download notifications. Opening a format that requires conversion first uploads the converted document and then downloads it to the editor, so both actions can trigger notifications. Closing an unchanged document causes no additional save or upload notification.

During co-authoring, the editor saves the combined document under the first participant's identity. File history records that save, rather than each person's individual edits. Use the editor's Track Changes feature when you need that attribution; co-authoring history and Track Changes explain how they differ.

Supported File Types

Each of the supported Online Editor Integration options lets you edit .docx, .xlsx, or .pptx files without any special conversion. The tables below list other formats that can be edited, and some that require a conversion first.

File Types Requiring Conversion

Some legacy productivity file formats, such as .doc, .xls, and .ppt, require conversion before they can be edited. Conversion can cause unexpected formatting changes when the file is opened in your online editor.

When a converted document cannot be stored in the original format, such as a .xls file being converted to .xlsx, the converted file is added to the folder alongside the original. The original is not changed.

A site administrator can configure any of these file types, such as CSV and RTF, to be treated as native text extensions with the site's Text-only File Extensions for Preview setting, which allows the designated file types to be previewed without converting them.

Files in formats that require conversion cannot be viewed or edited by Share Link visitors. To collaborate on a document in one of these formats, first edit it in the File Manager and then include the converted file in the Share Link.

Files.com Editor Supported Formats

The Files.com editor supports the formats below. See Files.com Online Editor for details.

Microsoft Office for Web Supported Formats

Microsoft Office for Web supports the formats below.