Collaborative Microsoft Office Editing in Dropbox

To add Dropbox as a Place (Windows) or Storage account (Mac):

1. Open Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel on your desktop. 
2. Click File. 
3. Click Open. 
4. Click Add a Place (Windows) or Manage Storage Accounts (Mac). 
5. Click Dropbox (Beta). 
6. Log in with your Dropbox credentials.
7. Click Log in. 

This adds Dropbox as a location to open and save files.
 

Once Dropbox is added as a location, you can open any Dropbox files you have access to in two ways:

• Directly from your File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac). Double-click on the file and it will begin a co-authoring session. 
• Open files from within the Office application and it will begin a co-authoring session. To do so: 
  1. Open Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel on your desktop. 
  2. Click File.
  3. Click Dropbox. 
  4. Click Open. 

To open files locally without starting a co-authoring session, you can either: 

• Lock the file before opening it.
• Toggle off Auto-Save in the top left of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint after opening the file.
• Turn off Microsoft 365 desktop co-authoring for your device from Dropbox desktop app preferences.

To edit and co-author files:

1. Log in to dropbox.com.
2. Click the name of a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file that's saved in a shared folder.
3. Click “…” (ellipsis) next to the file’s name.
4. Hover over Open and select Word for the web from the menu that appears.
5. Ask the people you'd like to collaborate with to follow the same steps.
6. The file will open in your web browser in Office Online. You can then edit it.
7. Click Save and return to Dropbox when you're finished editing.

To create new Office files from Dropbox:

1. Log in to dropbox.com.
2. Click Create.
3. Hover over Document, Presentation, or Spreadsheet depending on the type of file you’d like to create.
4. Click Word Document, PowerPoint Presentation, or Excel Workbook.
5. Log in to Office Online and create a new file. 

You can use any mobile device or tablet that has Dropbox and Microsoft Office 365 apps installed. 

Learn more about installing Dropbox app on your mobile devices.

Learn more about installing Microsoft Office 365 on your mobile devices.

Once you've installed the Dropbox and Microsoft Office 365 apps, add Dropbox as a Storage account. To do so:

1. Open Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel on your mobile device.
2. Click the folder icon at the bottom right of the screen to open a file. 
3. Click Add Storage Account.
4. Click Dropbox (Beta). 
5. Log in with your Dropbox credentials or select a Dropbox account to link to.
6. Click Log in. 

This adds Dropbox as a location to open and save files. 

Once Dropbox is added as a location, you can open any Microsoft file type that's been shared with you to co-author it on your mobile devices.

You can open files up to 250 MB in the Office desktop app. However, if you open a file that's larger than 250 MB from File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (macOS), it will open in offline mode. Performance for large files depends on your network and computer bandwidth. 

Windows

To use Microsoft co-authoring on Windows, you must be on Windows 11 or later. 

MacOS

Opening files directly from Finder to begin a co-authoring session requires users to update their Dropbox desktop app to File Provider, which is the most up-to-date and deeply integrated experience for macOS. Due to this, it requires macOS versions of 12.5 or later.


Mac users who aren’t on File Provider will still be able to open files for co-authoring from within Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

Any iOS mobile devices that support the Dropbox app and Office 365 app.  

Microsoft co-authoring isn't available on Android.