Introducing Office Live Workspaces

If you run a small business the chances are there are plenty of people you need to share documents with on a regular basis: Your part-time book-keeper, clients you’re working with, employees based out of the office and so on.

Store your documents online - not on your memory stick

Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta is a free extension of Microsoft Office which lets you upload your Office documents to an online storage area. Your workspace is accessed using your web browser through a simple Live ID login and once your documents are uploaded you can invite people you work with to view or edit them via their web browser too.

Using Office Live workspaces means you can keep one version of each of your important documents, instead of chasing multiple versions around cyber-space via email or comparing versions stored on memory sticks to those on your work and home PCs.

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Decide who views and edits documents

Creating a workspace is really quick and simple, and within minutes you have a central location for all your files, including Office, Excel and PowerPoint files. It’s easy to put all the key documents into the workspace, and you can then invite your colleagues or clients to view or edit them. They don’t need their own account to work on the documents in the shared workspace. But you’re in control. As the owner of the workspace, you decide who can edit and who can read your files.

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Free your email inbox

With 5GB of space for each account you won’t have to clog up your email with large presentations or spreadsheets ever again. You can create different areas for all the different people you need to collaborate with too. So you could create one area for your accounts which only you and your book-keeper can access or an area for each of your clients, so they can view and comment on project documents.

You can access your workspace securely from anywhere where you have an internet connection, so you can view the latest versions of your documents whether you’re at home, work or half-way around the world. And you can make your own updates whenever and wherever inspiration (or a spare half hour) strikes.

Office Live Workspace even has an inbuilt back-up feature which saves the old versions of documents with the new one, if it’s more than 12 hours since you edited something, or someone else makes changes. So content which has been accidentally deleted can be easily restored. Phew!

There are many more features to discover. Best of all, Office Live Workspace is absolutely free and you don’t need to download anything to use it. Sign up to Office Live Workspace and you can be using your own workspace in a few minutes.

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Office Live Workspace - Key facts

Anywhere Access

•	Store your Microsoft Office documents and other files (5GB available) in a password-protected location on the Internet and access them from almost any Internet-connected computer (full Firefox support for PC & Mac)
•	View Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office PowerPoint or PDF documents, even if Microsoft Office is not on the computer you are using
•	Keep Web-based lists (eg to-do lists) and ad hoc notes so that they are available when needed

Share and Collaborate With Others

•	Share a single document or a collection of documents; you control who has access to the areas of your workspace
•	Give editing or view-only rights to those with whom you share access, with full document versioning and time-stamping
•	Track workspace activities with the new activity panel and receive notifications when changes are made in the workspace
•	Use Microsoft SharedView beta to work with others in real time and share applications

Extend the Microsoft Office Experience

•	Open and save files directly to your workspace from Microsoft Office XP, 2003 or 2007
•	Automatically synchronise Contact, Tasks and Event lists with Outlook 2003 and 2007 so you are always up to date
•	Export any workspace list to Excel to archive list content or simply take it offline