Files.com Online Editor

Files.com includes an in-browser editor and previewer for documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Users author files in it or view files in it, depending on their permissions on the file.

A site administrator can instead enable the Microsoft Office for Web integration, which replaces the default Files.com editor with Microsoft Office for Web for viewing and editing standard productivity suite formats.

The Files.com editor supports advanced styling and formatting, high-fidelity rendering, spreadsheet analysis, and transitions and presenter mode for presentations. It also supports mail merge, importing CSV documents into spreadsheets, adding watermarks, and dragging contents from one document into another, all within the browser and without a separate application.

Hosted Within the Files.com Infrastructure

The Files.com editor runs entirely within the Files.com infrastructure. Files do not leave our managed infrastructure and are not transmitted to an external service.

Many competing services use managed SaaS from Microsoft or Zoho, which sends customer documents to those vendors to support the collaborative editing environment. Files.com does not.

To support co-editing, the editor uses temporary storage and processing in our USA region regardless of where files are stored permanently. Files.com manages this temporary storage automatically, and files are not retained in the USA beyond the editing session.

Maximum Supported File Sizes

The Files.com platform handles file sizes up to 5TB, but the editor has smaller limits for the size of file it can open.

Documents and spreadsheets are limited to 950MB. Presentations are limited to 150MB.

These limits apply to extensions that do not require conversion, such as DOCX, and to those that do, such as CSV or EPUB.

Files that exceed the maximum size for editing cannot be previewed.

Logging Changes from the Files.com Editor

Using the Files.com editor creates new entries in your file activity history. The interface shown in logs for these entries is "Office".

Creating a new work document in your site appears in the logs as creating the file, just as if you uploaded it.

Previewing a file in the editor is logged as a file download, because the file is downloaded from your storage to the editor. Opening a file for editing is also logged as a file download.

While you are editing a file, the editor saves your changes automatically every 2 to 5 minutes. Each save appears as a change in the file history.

When you close the editor, any unsaved changes are saved automatically, and that save also appears as a change in your file history.

During a co-authoring session with multiple people, every entry in the activity history is attributed to the user ID of the first person to start the session.

Email Notifications

Using the Files.com editor triggers folder activity email notifications.

Creating a new document within your site triggers upload notifications.

When a document is previewed or opened in the editor, it is downloaded from storage to the editor, which triggers download notifications. If you open a file type that requires conversion before editing, the system first uploads the converted document, then downloads that new file to open in the editor. Both the initial upload and the download can trigger notifications.

While you are editing a document, the editor saves your changes automatically every 2 to 5 minutes. Each save triggers an upload notification. Autosaving only happens when the document is actively being worked on; leaving the editor open for several minutes with no changes does not trigger uploads back to your storage.

When you close the editor, your changes are uploaded to storage, which triggers an upload notification. If the document was not changed since the last auto-save, no additional save occurs on close.