Temporary change to the way you edit files in Teams
The University’s activity within Microsoft Teams has risen by 522% in the last week. Similarly, Teams stats from all over the world are soaring upwards as we settle in to homeworking.
To accommodate the new growth and demand, Microsoft will soon roll out a temporary change to the way you edit Word documents in Teams.
When you access a Word document in the Teams application at the moment, whether through the ‘Files’ tab or from a conversation, you are taken straight to ‘edit mode’. This means you can begin editing the file as soon as you open it.
The change will require staff and students to perform an additional step in order to edit the document.
After the change, when you click the file, you’ll be taken to ‘view mode’. This means you need to click the ‘More options’ (…) menu, and select:
- Open in Desktop App, which opens the file in Microsoft Word on your device. You can save it from the Microsoft Word application and it will save in your Team as well, there’s no need to re-upload it.
- Open in Browser, which opens the file in Word Online. This is auto-saved, like Teams, so once you make your changes, you can close the window.
Try not to download files, as this will create a copy of the Word document in your Downloads folder and you’ll create duplicates. As a rule of thumb, always work on the one file.
This is only temporary. Once the global population returns to the workplace and less demand is placed on online meetings and file collaboration, Teams will return to normal. File editing in other Office 365 applications, such as OneDrive or SharePoint online won’t be impacted by this change.