Tip #08: Control how collaborators view and edit your documents in Writer.
Co-authoring tools in Writer are designed to help you take ownership of your work, even when it goes through collaborators for multiple levels of review. As the owner of the document, you can control everything from viewing, editing to locking your work or even a part of it from collaborators.
Here are the different ways Writer can help you stay in control of your collaborative process.
1. Lock content
Say you've finalized just one part of your document, but want to share the document with users for their input on the remaining part. You can lock your finalized part to prevent edits from collaborators while keeping the rest of the document free for any changes.
To do this, go to Review and click on the Lock Content icon from the top of the editor. A drop down will open. To lock a content that you've selected, click on Lock Selected Content and to lock the unselected content while keeping the selected portion unlocked, click on Lock Unselected Content.
Lock Selected Content
Lock Unselected Content
Apart from locking content from all your collaborators, Writer also lets you give editing access to specific users while locking the content for others. This comes in handy when your document contains information that you don't want all your collaborators to edit.
To do this, go to Review and click on the Lock Content icon from the top of the editor. From the drop down that opens, click on Advanced Options. Now choose whether you want to lock the selected or unselected content from your collaborators and then type in only the names of the collaborators to whom you want to grant editing access.
2. Mask content
You can mask sensitive information from collaborators without affecting the original document. This way, the masked content will not be revealed to your collaborators while sharing the document. To do this, go to
Review
and click on the
Mask Content
icon from the top of the editor. Now insert the content you want to mask from your collaborators.
3. Mark as final
Once you've discussed your work with collaborators and finalized it, you can mark the document as final. This will lock the document, preventing any more edits from collaborators. To do this, select Distribute from the top right of the editor and then click on Mark as Final.
4. Turn on/off Collaboration
Still editing the document yourself? Mask your edits from collaborators by turning off Collaboration. Once you're done editing the document, you can reveal your final draft by turning On Collaboration mode. This will avoid any editing overlaps from multiple users. To do this, go to Review and switch ON/OFF Collaboration from the top of the editor.
Turn On Collaboration
Turn Off Collaboration
Happy writing!