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. Keep the inputs visible and clearly labelled and the whole thing stays auditable — anyone who opens the file later, including you, can see at a glance exactly what feeds the result and change one assumption without hunting through the formula. The difference between a quick fix and a sheet you can trust is the extra minute you spend validating “share an excel spreadsheet”. Start on a copy or a tiny sample, keep the affected sheet visible, and compare the result with the tool above before you touch the real workbook. 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. The point is a layout choice that keeps the sheet readable and sortable, but the practical win is that someone else can open the file and understand what happened without asking you.
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. One habit worth forming early: name the cells that hold your inputs, so the formula reads in plain language instead of a string of cell addresses. A reviewer — or you in three months — can then follow the logic without decoding what B7 and D2 were supposed to mean, which is most of what makes a sheet maintainable.
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. The aim was to get you unstuck fast and leave you a little more capable than a copy-paste would. The answer is at the top, the tool proves it, and the detail above shows why it holds — so the next time a colleague asks, you can answer without reaching for search. The short version of “share an excel spreadsheet”: the answer is at the top of this page, the tool proves it on your own numbers, and the sections above explain why it holds so the next variation does not stump you. Excel rewards people who reference cells instead of typing values and who keep inputs separate from formulas, because that is what makes a result you can audit months later. Build it once, deliberately, with the live tool as a check, and you convert a one-off lookup into a reusable skill — which is the whole point of learning the why and not just the what.
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.
Other ways people ask this
On the way here you may have searched this as “how to share excel spreadsheet”, “how do you share an excel spreadsheet”, “share excel spreadsheet” and “how do i share an excel spreadsheet” — it is all the same task, and this page is the single, complete answer to it.
Why do people search for this in so many different ways?
Because the same task has many names. “how to share excel spreadsheet”, “how do you share an excel spreadsheet”, “share excel spreadsheet” all point at the one operation explained on this page, which is why they all lead here.