How do edit a word file in Confluence using Companion?
Asked by Daniel Tita:

It just doesn't work


Answers:
author: Andrew Kendris
body: Hello [@Daniel Tita](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4293919) - I agree it's a bit of a process but useful to keeping a Word or Excel file versioning in tact. Before starting, do you have the Companion app installed? Once installed, you'll need to have the Attachment macro on the page with the Word document attached.

With the file attached to the page you should see a carrot on the left of the file name - when you select it, you'll see a dropdown and an option to "Edit file". When you click on that, another screen will open and at the top right you'll see and "Edit with" dropdown and there you should see Word as an option. When you select that button, you'll download a local version of the attached file. Confluence will bring up a popup saying that it's waiting for file changes from Word (IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not exit out of your Confluence page because that will lose the connection between your local document and Confluence).

Here you'll be able to make any edits you want and then save the document as you would normally. When you make edits you should see this smaller popup screen in Confluence load and show a timestamp of the latest saved version. When you click "Update" in that smaller popup, you'll see another version accessible in the dropdown for that attachment.

It's not the most user-friendly experience but it saves time with all the attachments shared via email and external to team's space.

Below are a few screenshots to show the high-level walkthrough.

![Screenshot 1.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/137702i5B7169AC4EFC430B/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 1.png")![Screenshot 2.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/137703i2D2D0050F8ED642A/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2.png")![Screenshot 3.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/137704i952BE534CAE02570/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 3.png")![Screenshot 4.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/137705i73299CDD810192CB/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 4.png")![Screenshot 5.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/137706i2A67057A8FE7D181/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 5.png")

comments: author: Daniel Tita
body: Thank you very much Andrew! I was able to follow the steps. Will the Word macro be updated with the changes in the attachment Word automatically? Now please try to compare your Version 4 with Version 3, to show that we can track differences.


author: Andrew Kendris
body: Ah, very interesting. So I added the Word Macro to the page and then tried to edit the attachment. When I selected "Edit file", the "Edit with" option was not available at the top right.

With what you are trying to do, may I suggest that you put the content from the Word document directly into a Confluence page? It would be much easier to update the contents and you can leverage the "page history" feature that allows you to track the changes between versions. Plus Confluence allows you to export to Word and PDF if you need to share with team members outside of your environment.

![Screen Shot 2021-04-07 at 8.26.15 AM.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/137758i78C84EDCC2CF4BE7/image-dimensions/294x330?v=v2 "Screen Shot 2021-04-07 at 8.26.15 AM.png")![Screen Shot 2021-04-07 at 8.26.35 AM.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/137759i978EAA02BA09EAD6/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screen Shot 2021-04-07 at 8.26.35 AM.png")


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud