Excel and Sharepoint question (working from home edition)
March 17, 2020 12:33 AM Subscribe
Will a Home or Personal edition of Excel365 play nicely with my employer's Sharepoint files?
My (large, government) organisation uses Office 365 and Sharepoint and all that for file sharing. It's some enterprise arrangement, no idea what exactly. The Sharepoint sites contain various Excel files and I need to a) open these from Sharepoint; and b) save changes back to Sharepoint on the regular. This works fine in the office but now we are working from home.
These things are probably relevant:
1) The files have a lot of data in them, so we need to use the "Open in App" option. The browser version of Excel does not cut it.
2) We need to keep the records of changes/versions that Sharepoint provides.
3) This setup can't be changed easily due to various internal and external people relying on it in various ways.
4) I am working from my personal laptop and this is unlikely to change in the near future.
The working from home solution provided by my employer is to log in to a citrix gateway then launch remote desktop to my work PC, then open Sharepoint and then Excel from there. It is as chuggy as a chuggy thing, and after one day I already want to punch it via the monitor. I would love to find a solution to bypass all those layers.
Accessing Sharepoint directly is no problem but I don't currently have Excel installed on my laptop and don't want to waste money buying Office if it's not actually going to solve the problem.
So the question is(finally!):
If I install a Home or Person edition of Office365 on my home computer, will this work with the Excel files on the Sharepoint site (i.e. open and save changes to the Sharepoint file)?
AND
If not, do you know another way around this that will not break the other requirements? (e.g. is it possible to download and re-upload the file without losing the history?) I am a sharepoint n00b.
Thanks everyone, and sorry for the remedial question! I am actually quite computer-literate and have done a fair bit of googling, but am only finding extremely generic Microsoft non-answers on the web. I would prefer not to drop $$ on MS Office to find out the answer, hence hassling you lovely people first.
My (large, government) organisation uses Office 365 and Sharepoint and all that for file sharing. It's some enterprise arrangement, no idea what exactly. The Sharepoint sites contain various Excel files and I need to a) open these from Sharepoint; and b) save changes back to Sharepoint on the regular. This works fine in the office but now we are working from home.
These things are probably relevant:
1) The files have a lot of data in them, so we need to use the "Open in App" option. The browser version of Excel does not cut it.
2) We need to keep the records of changes/versions that Sharepoint provides.
3) This setup can't be changed easily due to various internal and external people relying on it in various ways.
4) I am working from my personal laptop and this is unlikely to change in the near future.
The working from home solution provided by my employer is to log in to a citrix gateway then launch remote desktop to my work PC, then open Sharepoint and then Excel from there. It is as chuggy as a chuggy thing, and after one day I already want to punch it via the monitor. I would love to find a solution to bypass all those layers.
Accessing Sharepoint directly is no problem but I don't currently have Excel installed on my laptop and don't want to waste money buying Office if it's not actually going to solve the problem.
So the question is(finally!):
If I install a Home or Person edition of Office365 on my home computer, will this work with the Excel files on the Sharepoint site (i.e. open and save changes to the Sharepoint file)?
AND
If not, do you know another way around this that will not break the other requirements? (e.g. is it possible to download and re-upload the file without losing the history?) I am a sharepoint n00b.
Thanks everyone, and sorry for the remedial question! I am actually quite computer-literate and have done a fair bit of googling, but am only finding extremely generic Microsoft non-answers on the web. I would prefer not to drop $$ on MS Office to find out the answer, hence hassling you lovely people first.
I’ll MeMail you - I accidentally bought the version of Office last year that allows installs on up to 5 computers (instead of just 1). I use one and gave another to a colleague, but have a few to spare. I’ll send you the license key and you’re welcome to use it til the account expires in June.
posted by JannaK at 4:59 AM on March 17, 2020
posted by JannaK at 4:59 AM on March 17, 2020
Presumably this would be a breach of your organisation‘s IT policies? Which may or may not be a concern depending on how vigorously they get enforced and how sensitive the data is. Have you reached out to your IT function to find out if they are already working on fixing the problem or changing the process? I’ve had a lot of IT emails over the last few days as people have started to work remotely in large numbers and the system gets stretched and they are sorting problems as they arise ( and we all have a work laptop with full load sets and VPN access as a matter of course and are set up to work outside our own offices).
Another consideration, presumably the current process also ensures that no two people work on the document at the same time? If you effectively create a local copy, even if you upload it again, how many other people are likely to be working in the files? How big of a problem does that create?
I get this is frustrating but consider what problems you may cause for yourself and others by working outside the normal process. Depending on how time sensitive this work is it may be a valid approach to accept lower productivity under the circumstances. Your organisation clearly is not set-up for large scale remote working so bound to be less efficient than in the office.
posted by koahiatamadl at 5:14 AM on March 17, 2020
Another consideration, presumably the current process also ensures that no two people work on the document at the same time? If you effectively create a local copy, even if you upload it again, how many other people are likely to be working in the files? How big of a problem does that create?
I get this is frustrating but consider what problems you may cause for yourself and others by working outside the normal process. Depending on how time sensitive this work is it may be a valid approach to accept lower productivity under the circumstances. Your organisation clearly is not set-up for large scale remote working so bound to be less efficient than in the office.
posted by koahiatamadl at 5:14 AM on March 17, 2020
I work in financial services, every organisation I've worked for makes it very clear that if you use anything other than the standard supplied technology, eg email information to a personal email to work from home or in any way send data outside of the organisation etc - it is gross misconduct and will result in being fired immediately.
As a result, I've followed the rules. If anything is delayed / late / impossible then we find a way. If we can't - then that is the organisation's problem. I will do my best to do my job and deliver but ultimately I'm not willing to get fired for it.
I would be really careful in doing anything that is outside of the agreed arrangements.
Best of luck.
posted by ElasticParrot at 6:09 AM on March 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
As a result, I've followed the rules. If anything is delayed / late / impossible then we find a way. If we can't - then that is the organisation's problem. I will do my best to do my job and deliver but ultimately I'm not willing to get fired for it.
I would be really careful in doing anything that is outside of the agreed arrangements.
Best of luck.
posted by ElasticParrot at 6:09 AM on March 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Go to office.com and log in with your work email. There is probably a “Good morning” page with a bunch of apps below it. Click on the “Install Office” dropdown in the top right and you should be able to download and install Office365.
The whole point of Office365 is they pay by user, not by computer. So you log in with your work information and you have access to work SharePoint/OneDrive, etc.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:00 AM on March 17, 2020 [3 favorites]
The whole point of Office365 is they pay by user, not by computer. So you log in with your work information and you have access to work SharePoint/OneDrive, etc.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:00 AM on March 17, 2020 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Oh, and if you buy your own version of Office and log in as Personal You instead of Work You, you won’t have access to Work SharePoint—only your personal OneDrive.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:02 AM on March 17, 2020
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:02 AM on March 17, 2020
Your first stop is to check with your organization's IT policies. For my large company, it would be against the rules to use personal equipment to access work resources even though it technically works.
posted by mmascolino at 8:38 AM on March 17, 2020
posted by mmascolino at 8:38 AM on March 17, 2020
Hmmm. I'm not sure some of the technical advice above is correct - but I am not an expert. Try this:
* Open that personal copy of Excel you have.
* Click on File (top left corner)
* Click on "Account" (bottom left corner)
* Now click "Add a service" (bottom left of the screen, under "Connected services")
* Add your SharePoint.
This might let you open files from your company SharePoint directly. Or not. Depends how your company has set it up. :)
Can't speak to the policy stuff.
posted by alasdair at 9:14 AM on March 17, 2020
* Open that personal copy of Excel you have.
* Click on File (top left corner)
* Click on "Account" (bottom left corner)
* Now click "Add a service" (bottom left of the screen, under "Connected services")
* Add your SharePoint.
This might let you open files from your company SharePoint directly. Or not. Depends how your company has set it up. :)
Can't speak to the policy stuff.
posted by alasdair at 9:14 AM on March 17, 2020
FWIW, I was having a very similar problem working from home today, and Huffy Puffy's advice just solved my issue. (Thanks Huffy Puffy!) So it's worth trying.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 9:48 AM on March 17, 2020
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 9:48 AM on March 17, 2020
Response by poster: Thanks Huffy Puffy, that's exactly the nugget of information I was missing! Now it's working great.
(and thanks to those who expressed concern about work IT policy - I'm not too concerned as we are explicitly allowed to log in to the Office portal from home and of course there is nothing remotely sensitive stored onm Sharepoint. It would be great if they gave us all computers to work from home on, but the mass working from home thing is obviously unplanned and they can't just conjure up resources for us all at short notice. Good luck to everyone else in the same situation.)
posted by procrastinator_general at 3:04 PM on March 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
(and thanks to those who expressed concern about work IT policy - I'm not too concerned as we are explicitly allowed to log in to the Office portal from home and of course there is nothing remotely sensitive stored onm Sharepoint. It would be great if they gave us all computers to work from home on, but the mass working from home thing is obviously unplanned and they can't just conjure up resources for us all at short notice. Good luck to everyone else in the same situation.)
posted by procrastinator_general at 3:04 PM on March 17, 2020 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
Second suggestion, and this is by far only a temporary workaround: Can you create new versions of the file with a timestamp in the name each time you change it? That way the history is maintained.
Third, do you know any students, or anyone with an edu email address? Office 365 Education
Sorry I don't have a specific answer to your question, although I offer my condolences and commiseration on the dumpster fire that is the citrix/remote desktop combo.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 4:40 AM on March 17, 2020 [1 favorite]