- [Instructor] There are lots of options
for sharing files with other people,
but I want to talk about a few options
that I think users of Microsoft Word should be aware of.
Of course, one of the most common ways to share a file
is to send it to somebody as an email attachment.
Just be aware if you send a file as an email attachment,
you're sending a copy of that file.
So if you continue to edit that document on your computer,
it will be a different file
from what you sent in that email.
But with that in mind,
you could open up your normal email application,
compose a message and attach a file to the message
and send that.
Or Word has a nice shortcut built in
to help you do that.
First, you should make sure
the document that you have open in Word
is the document that you want to share.
Then you can go to the backstage view
by clicking the File button in the top left,
then go to Share.
Or if you're working on the Mac,
you can go to the File menu at the top of the screen,
and there will be a Share sub menu there.
Now here on Windows
you'll see there is an Email option,
and then you can click where it says, Send as Attachment.
Or if you're on a Mac,
there's an option labeled Send Document,
in that Share sub menu.
When you click that,
it will open your default email application.
It will start a new message
and it will have that file already attached.
Just be careful here.
The email application that has been set as the default
on your computer might not be the email tool
that you use every day.
So if this interface is not familiar to you,
then you might not want to use this
as the method to send your message.
For now, I'm just going to cancel this.
I don't want to actually send this message.
And now I want to look at another way
to share a file in Word.
So I'm going to go back to the backstage view again,
and back to Share.
And we're looking for this option that says,
Share with People.
Or if you're on the Mac,
there's an option in the Share sub menu,
that's simply labeled as Share.
And that does the same thing.
Now what's nice about this option
is that you are sharing a single file with other people
using one of Microsoft's online sharing tools.
So you and everybody you shared the file with
will be able to open and edit the same file.
You're not dealing with multiple copies.
You're just accessing the same file
that is stored online.
But this feature only works if your file is stored
on one of Microsoft's cloud storage tools,
like OneDrive or SharePoint.
Now the file I have opened now is not stored there.
It's stored in the Documents folder on my computer.
So it's prompting me to save a copy of this file
to cloud storage.
I could do that,
but I don't want to introduce yet another copy.
So instead, what I'm going to do
is close this document.
And I want to go to File Explorer on Windows
or Finder on the Mac.
You're using the tool that you would normally use
to browse through the files
and documents on your computer.
And on the left side,
you can see that I already have OneDrive set up.
Now there are courses on LinkedIn Learning
for setting up OneDrive and SharePoint,
so you should refer to those,
if you need to learn how to do that.
But I already have OneDrive set up here.
And if I open up my OneDrive,
I already have a document stored on my OneDrive
that I want to work with.
So that's the document that I want to open.
So I'm not introducing a new copy here.
And once again,
we're going to go to the backstage view by clicking File.
Then we'll go to Share,
then to Share with People.
And now I am able to access that
because this file is stored
on one of the cloud storage tools.
So it opens this panel on the right.
And in the Invite field,
you need to put in the email address
for the person you want to share the file with.
Or if you are part of a Microsoft 365 organization,
you can search for one of your coworkers
in your organization.
So I could start a search here,
search for somebody in my organization,
and select her here.
But of course, it's also fine
to just put in a normal email address.
Once you've done that,
you can go to this menu
and decide whether this person
will be allowed to edit the document,
or if they're only allowed to view it.
Once that's all set, you can click Share.
The people you share the file with
will get an email with a link to that file,
but they do need a Microsoft account
that they can sign into
before they can access the file.
And anybody can set up a free account.
But if you're sharing it with people you work with
who already use OneDrive,
they can open the file from the link in the email
or from their shared documents on their OneDrive.
And since everybody is accessing the same file
from cloud storage,
you're not dealing with multiple copies.
So you can easily send a copy of a Word document
through email,
but if you are collaborating with people
who use OneDrive or SharePoint,
this might be a better system for sharing files.