What options do I have to work with a colleague in a different office on a shared document in real-time?

August 9, 2005 9:20 AM

What options do I have to work with a colleague in a different office on a shared document in real-time? I want to be able to open a word document and allow a user to watch/participate (view-only would be acceptable too) in the editing process. VNC or remote-desktop are not really options because there are two corporate firewalls in place and no VPN connections. Even a joint text editor would be ok in a pinch, just copy/paste from Word and back when complete. As always, free is better.
posted by gfroese to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Response by poster: I should add we are both stuck in Windows XP.
I also have the ability to create SSH tunnels from my home PC, but the other side is not quite as tech-savvy.
posted by gfroese at 9:31 AM on August 9, 2005

Why not use a Concurrent Version System?
posted by phrontist at 9:33 AM on August 9, 2005

Best answer: MoonEdit looks like it'll do what you want (being a joint text editor).
posted by edd at 9:34 AM on August 9, 2005

Best answer: I've never done this, but I know there's one application specifically for that, SubEthaEdit, it's only for Mac though.
Try searching for "collaborative text editing", here's the first stuff I came across: MoonEdit, for Windows & Linux, and it's free; DocSynch, also free.
posted by funambulist at 9:35 AM on August 9, 2005

Gobby is free and works on Windows, OS X, and Linux. It has a chat client built in too.
posted by wackybrit at 9:38 AM on August 9, 2005

It's probably overkill (and it costs about $10 for a one-day pass), but CoPilot (from fogcreek.com) would do what you want. (It is marketed toward helping fix someone else's computer, but it would work for editing a document on someone else's screen.)
posted by WestCoaster at 9:39 AM on August 9, 2005

I've used SubEthaEdit and it's amazing. So if you have a Mac it is probably your best bet for group text editing
posted by chunking express at 10:00 AM on August 9, 2005

Response by poster: Moonedit works great. Just what I needed. Another metafilter victory.
posted by gfroese at 11:14 AM on August 9, 2005

If you already have MS Office, I believe OneNote has some group editing features. It's very simple if you're on the same LAN and it's possible to do it across the internet as well (although I'm not 100% sure how to do so).
posted by GuyZero at 11:48 AM on August 9, 2005

I'm in the CoPilot beta (not sure if it's still live) if you want to try that out. Email is in the profile.
posted by blasdelf at 7:49 PM on August 9, 2005