By default, Foldr Bureau lets one person into a file at a time. Whoever gets there first can edit; everyone else gets it read-only until they’re done. That’s the safe behaviour and it suits most files.
Co-editing changes that: several people in the same file at once, changes landing live, everyone in their own colour. It’s off until you turn it on, and it depends on two switches that people regularly forget are separate.
The two switches
One: the format. On Foldr Settings > Integrations > Foldr Bureau, each tab has an Allow co-editing (multiple people at once) switch beneath its editor. This says “documents of this kind may be co-edited at all.”
Two: the share. In the settings for each share, under Co-authoring, there’s Allow co-authoring (multiple people at once). This says “files on this share may be co-edited.”
Both have to be on. That’s deliberate: the format switch is a statement about what Foldr is capable of, and the share switch is a decision about a particular set of files. It means the finance team can share a workbook without every document in your organisation quietly becoming collaborative.
If only one of the two is on, the file opens the way it always did, with one editor at a time and everyone else read-only. There’s no error, which is exactly why this is the first thing to check when somebody reports that co-editing “isn’t working”.
Desktop Word in the same session
Word documents go one step further. If Allow co-authoring in desktop Office (Word documents) is on under Foldr Settings > Integrations > Microsoft Office, somebody working in desktop Word can join the same session as the people in the browser, and the two edit the document together.
Two things to note. It’s Word documents only, by design: other file types fall back to ordinary one-at-a-time editing. And it’s a third switch, independent of the two above, so a document can be co-editable in the browser without desktop Word being invited in.
But what about the people outside your organisation?
Everything above assumes that everyone in the document has a Foldr account, and often the person who most needs to be in it doesn’t. The accountant looking at the budget, the consultant redrafting the policy, the parent governor working through the pack: historically the answer was to send them a copy and merge their changes back by hand afterwards, which is precisely the thing co-editing exists to stop.
If you have a Folio licence, you can invite them into the document instead. It’s one more switch, and unlike the others it lives on the link itself rather than in Settings:
The link’s own switch. Share a file or folder as a secure link with named external recipients, and the link’s panel has an Editing section. Turn it on, and those recipients can open the document and type in it alongside your staff.
A few things are deliberately true of that route, and they’re worth knowing before you switch it on:
- Named recipients only. An anonymous public link can never carry editing, however it’s set up, because an edit has to be attributable to somebody. Take the last external recipient off the link and the switch turns itself off with them.
- It’s co-editing or nothing. An external recipient never gets the document to themselves. If a live session can’t be established (the format switch is off, say, or the share’s co-authoring switch is), the document opens read-only and tells them so, rather than offering a Save that would quietly overwrite whatever your colleague is doing.
- The format and share switches still apply. The link switch is an extra condition, not a way round them. The format has to allow co-editing, and so does the share.
- Download-only links can’t be editable. If the link expires on download there’s no document view for an editor to open, so Foldr refuses the combination rather than storing a setting that does nothing.
- Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The in-house Bureau editors, and only those: nothing on a link is handed to Office Online, Google or the desktop, because a link-scoped token can’t reach any of them.
They’re in the same document, not a copy of it
This is the part worth being clear about, because it’s the bit people assume can’t be true. An external recipient editing through a link and a colleague editing through the share are in one session, on one document, in the same file on the same share. Their cursors appear in each other’s windows, the changes land as they’re typed, and the file saves back where it always was.
Turning it off
Untick Editing, or remove the recipient, and it takes effect immediately: the next save from that person is refused rather than waiting for a token to expire. Worth knowing if you’ve ever switched something off at five o’clock and wondered whether it really had.
And where they open it from doesn’t matter
An external recipient can open the document from the link they were emailed, or sign in at your main Foldr address and find it under Shared with Me. Same document, same session, same editor either way.
What this changes about checkout
Whilst people are co-authoring, the document is no longer checked out exclusively to one person. That’s the whole point, but it’s worth saying out loud if you rely on the Checkout permission as a control rather than a convenience. See checkout permissions for how that behaves normally.
How many people fit
Ten, on every format. Anyone arriving after that is told the file is full and can open it read-only instead, which at least tells them where they stand.
Ten is a working ceiling rather than a design goal. If you find yourself wanting more people in a spreadsheet than that, the spreadsheet is usually the problem.
When a file opens read-only anyway
Working through it in order:
- Is the editor on for that format? Without an editor there’s nothing to co-edit.
- Are both co-editing switches on, the one on the format and the one on the share?
- Is the file full? Ten people is the ceiling, on every format.
- Can the person edit the file at all? Co-editing doesn’t grant permissions. Somebody with read access reads, the same as always.
- Is somebody in it from desktop Word, on a share where desktop co-authoring is off? In that case the desktop editor holds it and the browser waits.
- Is this an external recipient on a link? Then check the link’s Editing switch, that they’re a named recipient rather than anyone who has the URL, and that the link isn’t set to expire on download. Every check above applies to them as well: they join the same session as everybody else, so there has to be a session for them to join.
Is this a good idea for every share?
Probably not, and it’s worth thinking about before you switch it on estate-wide. Co-editing is a genuine improvement on a working document that several people own together: a budget, a plan, a rota. It’s a poorer fit for a document with one author and a formal review, where one person holding the file is a feature rather than an obstacle.
Turn it on per share, on the shares where people are already emailing each other versions of the same file. That’s the tell.