Microsoft Word 2010 : Sharing Word Documents Online - Sharing a Document Through Email

One of the easiest and most obvious ways to share a Word document is by attaching it to an email message. When you send the message, the document goes with it. Anyone who receives the message can open the document in Word.

Attaching a Document to an Email Message

When you attach a document to an email message, you can send the file in Word, PDF, or XPS format. All recipients gets their own separate copy of the document.

Attaching a Document in Word Format

This method is the simplest way to share a Word document. Word uses Microsoft Outlook—or your default email program, whatever it may be—to create a new email message with the document already attached in Word format (.docx). You just need to send it. Here’s how:

1.	Make sure your document is ready to be shared; then save it. Keep the document open in Word.
2.	On the File tab, click Save & Send. The Save & Send page opens, as shown in Figure 1. The page displays options for emailing and faxing a document. Figure 1. Options for emailing a document on the Save & Send page.
3.	Click Send as Attachment. A new Outlook message window appears, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. A new Microsoft Outlook message window with a Word document attached.
4.	Click the To box and address the message to the recipients. If you want to “copy” the message and document to anyone else, click the Cc box and add their addresses there.
5.	Click the composition pane (the large text box at the bottom of the message window) and type the message’s text.
6.	Click Send.

Sharing a document in Word format can cause problems because others can easily open and change the document. You can protect the document to prevent others from changing it , or you can simply send it in a different file format that can’t easily be modified. Two such formats are Adobe’s Portable Document Format (.PDF) and Microsoft XML Paper Specification (.XPS). Special viewers are required to view documents saved in either of these formats; PDF files can be viewed in Adobe Acrobat Reader, and XPS files can be viewed in the XPS viewer built into Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Windows 7. Both PDF and XPS file formats maintain all the document’s formatting characteristics. To attach a file in either of these formats, repeat the preceding steps, but click either the Send as PDF or Send as XPS button on the Save & Send page. Word opens a new message window but attaches the document in the selected format.

Emailing a Link to a Document

If the document is saved in a shared location, such as a server on your company’s network, you can send a message containing a link to the document rather than the document itself. This option enables you to share a document without distributing copies of it. If the message’s recipients want to review or mark up the document , they can all work in the same file and save their changes together, making it easier for you to merge their revisions into the document.

Sending a Link to a Document

Before you can distribute a link to a document, the file must be stored in a location that others can access, such as a shared folder on a networked computer. (If you can’t save the file this way, Word won’t even let you create a link to the file.) Recipients can open the file by clicking the link in the message. So, assuming you can share a document this way, here’s what to do:

1.	Make sure your document is ready to be shared, and save it to a shared location that the message’s recipients can access.
2.	On the File tab, click Save & Send.
3.	Click Send a Link. An Outlook message window appears, as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3. A message window containing a link to a Word document at a shared location.
4.	In the To: and Cc: boxes, address the message to the recipients.
5.	In the composition pane, type the text for the message. Be sure not to change the link.
6.	Click Send.

By default, Word enables only one user to edit the document at a time. If someone is working on the shared file and someone else tries to open it by clicking the link, the second user may see a dialog box warning that the file is locked. If this happens, the second user can open the document in read-only mode (changes can’t be made), save a copy of the file on a local disk (changes can be made but must be merged into the shared file when it becomes available), or ask to be notified when the shared file becomes available for editing.