In Excel: save the file to OneDrive or SharePoint, then press Share in the top-right corner and enter the people or copy the link — that is what enables real co-authoring.
Save the workbook to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint — co-authoring does not work on a local or network drive.
Click Share in the top-right corner of the Excel window.
Enter names or email addresses, or use Copy Link and set who the link works for.
Choose "Can edit" or "Can view"; use Link settings to set an expiry date or a password where your plan allows it.
Use File ▸ Info ▸ Version History to review and roll back changes.
To stop sharing, open the Share pane ▸ Manage Access and remove people or the link.
What this does
Modern sharing and the old Share Workbook feature are two different things, and picking the wrong one is the usual source of pain. Co-authoring requires the file to live on OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint; then several people edit the same .xlsx at once and see each other's cursors. The legacy "Share Workbook (Legacy)" command is a pre-cloud mechanism that merges separate copies, blocks tables, conditional formatting and PivotTable edits, and is hidden from the ribbon by default for good reason. If you cannot use cloud storage, the honest alternatives are sending copies and merging them yourself, or moving the data into a system built for concurrent writes. Most people learn this as a sequence of clicks and forget it by next week; learning it as a pattern instead is what lets you apply it to the next, slightly different version of the problem without starting from scratch. That is the difference this page is trying to make. For “create a share excel spreadsheet”, the reliable version is a short checking loop, not just the first command that appears to work. Run it on a deliberately small range first, watch how the affected sheet change, and only then apply the same setup to the full sheet. When this is a ribbon command, the selection matters more than the button: confirm the range, apply the command, then spot-check the output before saving. That is what makes a layout choice that keeps the sheet readable and sortable useful in real work: repeatable, auditable, and not dependent on memory or luck.
A worked example
Save budget.xlsx to OneDrive, then click Share ▸ enter two colleagues' addresses ▸ set the permission to "Can edit" ▸ Send. All three of you can type at once, and coloured cursors show who is where. Use File ▸ Info ▸ Version History to see and restore earlier states. If instead you email the .xlsx as an attachment, you have created three files that will diverge within a day. The version-control problem — five copies of budget_final_v3_JS.xlsx — is solved entirely by where the file is stored, and that is the one decision people skip. If there is any chance you will reuse this, drop it into a small template tab right now: a labelled input area on the left and the formula beside it, checked once against the tool above. Next time the same question comes up, the answer is a single paste away instead of a rebuild from memory.
In Google Sheets
If you are in Google Sheets rather than Excel, the good news is that the formula shown here is identical and the workflow barely changes — menus sit across the top instead of in a ribbon, and a few function names differ slightly, but anything you build here moves across with little or no rework. Nothing on this page is behind a login: the tool runs entirely in your browser, the formula is shown in full with one-click copy, and the steps work the same on Windows and Mac. That is the whole promise here — the exact answer, a way to prove it on your own numbers, and just enough context to make it stick. Treat “create a share excel spreadsheet” as a small building block rather than a chore. Once the inputs sit in their own cells and the formula reads from them, the same setup answers a dozen related questions with a tweak, and Excel keeps every dependent figure current as the data changes. The tool above is there so you can rehearse and verify before committing anything to a real workbook; the steps and worked example are there so the logic sticks. Get it right once and it stops costing you time — it starts saving it, every time the question comes back around.
Common mistakes
- Emailing the file as an attachment and then trying to reconcile four edited copies.
- Enabling the legacy Share Workbook feature, which silently blocks tables, conditional formatting and many PivotTable operations.
- Storing the file on a network share and expecting co-authoring, which needs OneDrive or SharePoint.
- Granting "Can edit" to a link that anyone can forward, when the data is confidential.
- Sharing a macro-enabled .xlsm and expecting co-authoring — macro workbooks do not support it.
Frequently asked questions
How do I share an Excel file?
Save it to OneDrive or SharePoint, then click Share in the top-right corner and add people or copy a link. That is what enables simultaneous editing.
Can several people edit at once?
Yes, if the file is on OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint and is a normal .xlsx. Macro-enabled workbooks and files on local or network drives do not support co-authoring.
What is Share Workbook (Legacy)?
The pre-cloud mechanism for merging separate copies. It disables tables, conditional formatting and much PivotTable editing, and Microsoft hides it by default. Use OneDrive co-authoring instead.
How do I stop sharing?
Open the Share pane and choose Manage Access, then remove individual people or delete the sharing link.