Microsoft announces public preview rollout of Teams' Excel Live support

Microsoft finally allows users to collaborate on their spreadsheet tasks using Excel Live on Teams. The company announced the release of its public preview last week, giving users a bunch of convenient ways to navigate their documents together while staying connected during meetings. Participants can also individually explore the workbooks and join others in a specific document anytime.

Users can start presenting with Excel Live during a Teams meeting by selecting Share and proceeding to Excel Live. The section will show a number of spreadsheet files they can choose from. There are also options for opening other Excel workbooks through OneDrive or the users’ computers. After selecting one, a prompt will appear asking you to “Share” the file, which you should approve.

On the other hand, it is important to note that the new feature can only be accessed by those who take part in the Teams Public Preview channel. Also, there are some limitations to it, so you can’t expect all preview features to be equally available on all platforms. For instance, mobile and tablet devices only have view sharing capability, while the web platform allows users to share, edit, and do view sharing.

Additionally, using Excel Live only allows a single organization to include a maximum of 25 attendees in a meeting. Sadly, Excel Live meeting recordings are also audio-only, which means your team won’t be able to review some areas of the meeting visually in case there is a need for it. Microsoft also reiterated that the web support to start sharing would work only in public preview.