Calc Guide

11

Chapter
Sharing and Reviewing
Documents
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separately.)CopyrightThis document is Copyright © 2005–2010 by its contributors as listed
in the section titled Authors. You may distribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of either the GNU General Public License, version 3 orlater, or the Creative Commons Attribution License, version 3.0 or
later.
All trademarks within this guide belong to their legitimate owners.

Authors
Martin J. Fox
Spencer E. Harpe
Peter Kupfer
Sigrid Kronenberger
Andy Brown
Jean Hollis Weber

Feedback
Please direct any comments or suggestions about this document to:authors@documentation.openoffice.org

Publication date and software version
Published 21 June 2010. Based on OpenOffice.org 3.2.

You can download
an editable version of this document fromhttp://oooauthors.org/english/userguide3/published/

Contents
Copyright............................................................................................... 2
Introduction........................................................................................... 4
Sharing documents (collaboration)........................................................4
Setting up a spreadsheet for sharing..................................................4
Opening a shared spreadsheet............................................................5
Saving a shared spreadsheet..............................................................6
Recording changes................................................................................. 7
Preparing a document for review (optional).......................................7
Identifying copies of spreadsheets......................................................8
Recording changes (tutorial)..............................................................8
Adding comments to changes..............................................................10
Editing change comments.................................................................11
Adding other comments.......................................................................11
Editing comments.............................................................................12
Formatting comments.......................................................................13
Finding comments using the Navigator............................................13
Reviewing changes..............................................................................13
Viewing changes...............................................................................14
Accepting or rejecting changes.........................................................15
Merging documents.............................................................................16
Comparing documents.........................................................................18
Saving versions.................................................................................... 18

Reviewing and Sharing Documents

3

Introduction
This chapter covers methods for editing shared documents: sharing(collaboration), recording changes, adding comments, reviewing
changes, merging and comparing documents, and saving and using
document versions. Basic editing techniques are discussed in Chapter
2 (Entering, Editing, and Formatting Data).

Sharing documents (collaboration)
In OpenOffice.org Writer, Impress, and Draw, only one user at a time
can open any document for editing. In Calc, many users can open thesame spreadsheet for writing at the same time.
Each user who wants to collaborate should be sure to enter a name on
the Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > User Data page.
Some menu commands are not available (grayed out) when change
tracking or document sharing is activated.

Setting up a spreadsheet for sharing
At any time, you can set up a spreadsheet for sharing with others. With
the spreadsheet document open, choose Tools > Share Document toactivate the collaboration features for this document. A dialog opens
where you can enable or disable sharing.

Figure 1: Choosing to share a spreadsheet

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Reviewing and Sharing Documents

To enable sharing, select the box at the top of the dialog, and thenclick OK. A message appears stating that you must save the document
to activate shared mode. Click Yes to continue. The word (shared) isthen shown on the title bar after the document’s title.
The Tools > Share Document command can be used to switch themode for a document from unshared to shared. However, if you want touse a shared document in unshared mode, you need to save the shareddocument using another name or path. This creates a copy of the
spreadsheet that is not shared.

Opening a shared spreadsheet
When you open a spreadsheet document that is in shared mode, amessage appears stating that the document is in shared mode and thatsome features are not available in this mode. After clicking OK, thedocument is opened in shared mode.
The following features are known to be disabled in a sharedspreadsheet document:
Edit > Changes, except for Merge Document
Edit > Compare Document
Edit > Sheet > Move/Copy & Delete
Insert > Cells Shift Cells Down & Shift Cells Right
Insert > Sheet from file
Insert > Names
Insert > Comment
Insert > Picture > From File
Insert > Movie and Sound
Insert > Object
Insert > Chart
Insert > Floating Frame
Format > Sheet > Rename, Tab Color
Format > Merge Cells > Merge and Center, Merge Cells, Split Cells
Format > Print Ranges
Tools > Protect Document
Data > Define Range
Data > Sort
Data > Subtotals
Data > Validity
Data > Multiple Operations
Data > Consolidate
Data > Group and Outline (all)Data > DataPilot

Sharing documents (collaboration)

5

Saving a shared spreadsheet
When you save a shared spreadsheet, one of several situations may
occur:• If the document was not modified and saved by another user since

you opened it, the document is saved.
• If the document was modified and saved by another user since
you opened it, one of the following events will occur:–
If the changes do not conflict, the document is saved, thedialog below appears, and any cells modified by the other user
are shown with a red border.

Figure 2: Update message after saving–

If the changes conflict, the Resolve Conflicts dialog is shown.
You must decide for each conflict which version to keep, yoursor the other person’s. When all conflicts are resolved, thedocument is saved. While you are resolving the conflicts, noother user can save the shared document.

Figure 3: Resolve Conflicts dialog• If another user is trying to save the shared document and resolve

conflicts, you see a message that the shared spreadsheet file is6

Reviewing and Sharing Documents

locked due to a merge-in in progress. You can choose to cancel
the Save command for now, or retry saving later.
When you successfully save a shared spreadsheet, the document shows
the latest version of all changes saved by all users.

Recording changes
You can use several methods to record changes that you or others
make to a document.
• You can use change marks to show added material, deletedmaterial, and changes to formatting. Later, you or another person
can review the document and accept or reject each change.
• If you are not using file sharing, you can make changes to a copyof the document (stored in a different folder, under a different
name, or both), then use Calc to compare the files and show thechanges. See page 18.
• You can save versions that are stored as part of the original file.
See page 18.
Reviewers can leave comments in the document, either attached to
specific changes or standalone.

Preparing a document for review (optional)
When you send a document to someone else to review or edit, you may
want to protect it first so that the editor or reviewer does not have toremember to turn on the revision marks. After you have protected the
document, any user must enter the correct password in order to turnoff protection and accept or reject changes.
1) Open the document and make sure that the Edit > Changes >Record menu item has a check mark next to it, indicating thatchange recording is active.
2) (Optional) Click Edit > Changes > Protect Records. On theProtect Records dialog, type a password (twice) and click OK.
Note

Passwords must contain at least five characters.
It is not necessary to password protect the document while
preparing it for review.

Recording changes

7

Identifying copies of spreadsheets
When not using the document sharing feature, it is important to keep
track of the different copies of the document. This can be done either
in the file name or in the file title. If you have not provided a file title inthe spreadsheet’s properties, the spreadsheet’s file name is displayedin the title bar. To set the title of the spreadsheet, select File >Properties > Description.

Recording changes (tutorial)
For this chapter we will work with a budget proposal for a baseballteam.
You are the sponsor of a youth baseball team. The coachhas submitted a budget to you for the season and you needto edit the costs and return it to her.
You are concerned that if you just make the changes, thenthe coach won't see the changes you made. You decide to
use Calc with the record changes feature turned on, so thatthe coach can easily see the change you have made.
Figure 4 shows the budget spreadsheet your coach submitted.

Figure 4: Baseball budget spreadsheet
Looking over the figures, you see a few places where money could besaved:• Post-game snacks can be bought by parents.
• New uniforms can wait; only buy 10 to replace damaged ones.

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Reviewing and Sharing Documents• Buy cheaper baseballs.
• Only buy 2 spare gloves.

To make these changes, use the record changes feature in Calc. To
start recording changes:
1) Open the Budget Spreadsheet.
2) Select Edit > Changes > Record from the menu bar.
3) Begin editing the document.
A colored border, with a dot in the upper left-hand corner, appears
around a cell where changes were made (Figure 5). Other reviewers
then quickly know which cells were edited. A deleted column or row ismarked by a heavy colored bar.

Figure 5: Edited document with red border on changed cells
Tip

Some changes, for example cell formatting, are not recorded andmarked.

Tip

To change the color that indicates changes, select Tools >Options > OpenOffice.org Calc > Changes.

When you finish editing the document, you can send it to your coach.
You may want to explain your rationale for the changes. You can shareyour insight in two ways: by adding comments to the changes you
made, or by adding general comments to the spreadsheet.

Recording changes

9Adding comments to changes
Calc automatically adds to any recorded change a comment that
describes what was changed (for example, Cell B4 changed from ‘9’ to‘4’). Reviewers and authors can add their own comments to explain
their reasons for the changes.
To add a comment to a change:
1) Make the change to the spreadsheet.
2) Select the cell with the change.
3) Choose Edit > Changes > Comments. The dialog shown in
Figure 6 appears. The automatically-added comment provided by
Calc appears in the title bar of this dialog and cannot be edited.
4) Type your own comment and click OK.

Figure 6: Comment dialog

Tip

You can step through your changes one at a time using the left
and right arrows on the right hand side of the Comment dialog,
and add comments to each change. The title bar for theComment dialog shows the cell and the change you arecommenting on.

After you have added a comment to a changed cell, you can see it byhovering the mouse pointer over the cell, as shown in Figure 7.

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Reviewing and Sharing Documents

Figure 7: Comment added to cell B3
The comment also appears in the dialog when you are accepting andrejecting changes, as shown in the first line of Figure 12 on page 16.

Editing change comments
1) Select the cell with the change comment that you want to edit.
2) Select Edit > Changes > Comments.
3) Edit the comment and click OK.

Tip

You can view your comments one at a time using the left andright arrows located on the right hand side of the Comment
dialog. You do not need to click OK after editing each comment;
you can save them all at once when you’re done editing.

Adding other comments
Calc provides another type of comments (formerly called “notes”),
which authors and reviewers often use to exchange ideas, ask forsuggestions, or brainstorm in the document.
To add a comment:
1) Select the cell that the comment applies to.
2) Select Insert > Comment or right-click and select Insert
Comment. (The latter method does not work if the automatic
spelling checker is active and the cell contains a misspelled
word.) The box shown in Figure 8 appears.
3) Type the text of your comment in the box.
4) Click outside the box to close it.

Adding other comments

11

Figure 8: Inserting a comment
Now the cell to which you added the comment has a colored dot in theupper right-hand corner, as shown in Figure 9. It does not have acolored border, unless the cell was also changed.

Figure 9: Colored dot in cell containing a comment
Tip

You can change the colors Calc uses for notes by selecting Tools> Options > OpenOffice.org > Appearance.

To view the comment you just added, hover the mouse pointer over thecell that has a comment; the comment appears, as shown below.

Figure 10: Viewing a comment

Editing comments
You can edit and format the text of a comment, just as you do for any
other text.
1) Right-click on the cell containing the comment marker, andchoose Show comment from the pop-up menu.
2) Select the comment, then double-click on it. The cursor changes
to the usual blinking text-entry cursor, and the Formatting toolbar
changes to show text attributes.

12

Reviewing and Sharing Documents3) When done, click outside the comment to deselect it. To hide thecomment again, right-click on the cell and deselect Show
Comment on the pop-up menu.

Formatting comments
You can change the background color, border style, transparency, andother attributes of a comment.
1) Right-click on the cell containing the comment marker, andchoose Show comment from the pop-up menu.
2) Click on the comment itself. The Formatting toolbar changes toshow many of the comment formatting options. These are thesame as the options for formatting graphics; see Chapter 5 (Using
Graphics in Calc) for more information.
You can also right-click on the comment to see a menu of choices,
some of which lead to dialogs in which you can fine-tune theformatting; these dialogs are also discussed in Chapter 5.
3) When done, click outside the comment to deselect it. To hide thecomment again, right-click on the cell and deselect Show
Comment on the pop-up menu.

Finding comments using the Navigator
The small comment markers in the corners of cells can be difficult tosee, so Calc provides another way to find them, by using the Navigator.
If any comments are in the spreadsheet, the Navigator shows a mark(usually a + or an arrow) next to the word Comments. Click on thismark to display a list of comments. Double-click on the comment you
want to jump directly to the cell it is associated with.

Reviewing changes
At this point, we are going to change our perspective from the point ofview of the team sponsor to that of the coach, so we can see how toreview and accept or reject the changes to the document the coachoriginally wrote.

Reviewing changes

13You are the coach of a youth baseball team and you
submitted a potential budget created in Calc to your teamsponsor.
Your sponsor has reviewed the document using the recordchanges feature of Calc. Now, you want to review thosechanges and accept or reject the counter proposal.
Because the sponsor recorded changes in Calc, you caneasily see what changes were made and decide how to act.

Viewing changes
Calc gives you tremendous control over what changes you see whenreviewing a document. To change the available filters, select Edit >Changes > Show. The dialog shown in Figure 11 opens.

Figure 11: Show changes dialog
Using the different settings, you can control which changes appear on
screen. You can filter based on:• Date – Only changes made in a certain time range are displayed.
• Author – Only changes made by a specific author are displayed.
This is especially useful if you have multiple reviewers on the
document.
• Range – Only changes made in a specific range of cells are
displayed. This is especially useful if you have a large spreadsheet
and only want to review a part of it.

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Reviewing and Sharing Documents• Comment – Searches the content of the comments and only

displays changes which have comments that match the search
criteria.
• Show accepted changes – Only changes you accepted are
displayed.
• Show rejected changes – Only changes you rejected are
displayed.
Note

You can also access the filter control in the Accept or Reject
Changes dialog shown in Figure 12. Click the Filter tab to get a
set of options similar to those shown in Figure 9.

Accepting or rejecting changes
When you receive a document back with changes, the beauty of therecording changes system becomes evident. Now, as the original
author, you can step through each change and decide how to proceed.
To begin this process:1) Open the edited document.
2) Select Edit > Changes > Accept or Reject. The dialog shown in
Figure 12 appears.
3) Calc steps through the changes one at a time. You can choose toaccept or reject each change as you go through.
The Comment column by default contains an explanation of the changethat was made. If the reviewer added a comment to the change, it isdisplayed, followed by the description of the change, as in the first lineof Figure 12.
If more than one person has reviewed the document, one reviewer may
have modified another reviewer’s change. If so, the changes arehierarchically arranged with a plus sign for opening up the hierarchy.

Reviewing changes

15Figure 12: Accept or Reject changes dialog
On the Filter tab of this dialog (not shown here), you can choose how
to filter the list of changes: by date, author, cell range, or comments
containing specific terms. After selecting the filter criteria, switch backto the List tab to see the results.

Merging documents
You submitted your budget proposal to your sponsor,
but you sent it to one of your assistant coaches aswell. Both of them returned their revised budget toyou at the same time.
You could review each document and the changes
separately, but to save time, you want to see both oftheir revisions simultaneously.
To do this, you can use Calc’s merge document
feature.
The processes discussed to this point are effective when you have one
reviewer at a time. Sometimes, however, multiple reviewers all returnedited versions of a document at the same time. In this case, it may bequicker to review all of these changes at once, rather than one review
at a time. For this purpose, you can merge documents in Calc.

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Reviewing and Sharing Documents

To merge documents, all of the edited documents need to haverecorded changes in them.
1) Open the original document.
2) Select Edit > Changes > Merge Document.
3) A file selection dialog opens. Select a file you want to merge andclick OK.
4) After the documents merge, the Accept or Reject Changes dialog
opens, as in Figure 13, showing changes by more than one
reviewer. If you want to merge more documents, close the dialog
and then repeat steps 2 and 3.
Now all of the changes are combined into one document and you can
accept or reject the changes. Changes from different authors appear indifferent colors in the document, as shown in Figure 14. In thisexample, all of the changes from Robert are blue and the changes from
Mia are red.

Figure 13: Accept or Reject for merged documents

Figure 14: Merged documents with different author colors
Merging documents

17Comparing documents
Sometimes when sharing documents, reviewers may forget to record
the changes they make. This is not a problem with Calc, because Calc
can find the changes by comparing documents.
In order to compare documents you need to have the original
document and the one that is edited. To compare them:
1) Open the edited document that you want to compare with theoriginal document.
2) Select Edit > Compare Document.
3) An open document dialog appears. Select the original document
and click Insert.
Calc finds and marks the changes as follows:• All data that occurs in the edited document but not in the originalis identified as inserted.
• All data that is in your original document but is not in the edited
document is identified as deleted.
• All data that is changed, is marked as changed.
From this point you can go through and accept or reject changes as
you could normally.

Saving versions
Most documents go through many drafts. It is often useful to save newversions of a document. You can do this by saving a copy of the
document (under a different name) after each revision, or you using
Calc’s version feature.
CautionIf you do a Save As... of a document with different versions
stored in it, the old versions are not saved in the new file.

To use version management in Calc:
1) Choose File > Versions. The Versions dialog opens.

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Reviewing and Sharing Documents

Figure 15: Version management dialog
2) Click the Save New Version button to save a new version.
3) A dialog opens where you can enter comments about this version.

Figure 16: Version comment dialog
4) After you enter your comment and click OK, the new version is
included in the version list.

Figure 17: Updated version list

Saving versions

19

Now when you save the file, both versions are saved in the same file.
From this point you can:• Open an old version – Select the version and click the Openbutton and a read-only version of a previous version opens.
• Compare all versions – Clicking the Compare button performs anaction similar to merging documents together. An Accept or
Reject Changes dialog opens showing all of the changes throughthe different versions.
• Review the comments – Select a version and click the Show
button to display the full comments made by yourself or otherreviewers.
Note

20

The new file is bigger in size, as if two spreadsheets were
saved together.

Reviewing and Sharing Documents