Sharing, comments and version history

Writer documents and spreadsheets are shared the same way: you decide who can view, comment on or edit each one, and everyone with access works on the same live copy. You see each other's cursors and names as you work, comments and suggestions sit beside the content, and every earlier version is kept so nothing is ever really lost.

This page covers both apps. For the editors themselves, see Writer: documents and Spreadsheets.

Who can do what

	Viewer	Commenter	Editor	Owner
Open and read it	✓	✓	✓	✓
Download, print, make a copy	✓ *	✓ *	✓	✓
Add comments and reply		✓	✓	✓
Suggest edits (Writer)		✓	✓	✓
Change the content, rename it			✓	✓
Accept or reject suggestions			✓	✓
Version history and the activity dashboard			✓	✓
Share it with others			✓ *	✓
Move it to a folder, move it to the trash, delete it forever				✓

* Unless the owner turns it off — see Settings for people with access.

The owner is whoever created the document, and it lives in their mailbox's Documents. The title bar shows "View only" or "Comment only" when that's all you can do.

Click Share in the top-right corner of the document.

Type the names or addresses of the people you want to add. Suggestions come from your contacts and your organization.
Choose Viewer, Commenter or Editor.
Send. Each person gets an email with a link that opens the document.

Only people with a SingleSign account can be added by address. For anyone else, use a link (below).

If you're in a company mailbox, you can also share with everyone in your organization at once and pick their role. Who has access lists everyone with their role; remove someone's access with the bin button next to their name, and change the organization's role from its drop-down. Copy link at the bottom copies the document's address — handy for someone who already has access.

If you open Share on a document you can't share, you'll see who owns it and a link you can pass on to people who already have access.

Under General access, a document is either:

Restricted — only the people and organization listed can open it. This is how every document starts.
Anyone with the link — anyone who has the link can open it, with the role you pick for the link:

Link role	What someone with the link can do
Viewer	Anyone on the internet with the link can view — no sign-in needed.
Commenter	Anyone can view; people signed in to SingleSign can also comment.
Editor	Anyone on the internet with the link can edit — no sign-in needed.

A few things to know:

Commenting always needs a sign-in. Someone without a SingleSign account can view or edit through a link, but never comment.
People editing without signing in are asked "What should others call you?" first. That name is shown next to their cursor and on the changes they make. They don't get an offline copy on their device.
Signed-in people get the stronger role. If you've been given Viewer but the link says Editor, opening it through the link lets you edit.
Switching back to Restricted stops the link working straight away. If you change the link's role, copy the link again before you pass it on — the old one may stop working.

In Writer, File ▸ Share ▸ Publish to web goes one step further: a read-only link without the editing tools, plus code to embed the document in a website. See Publishing to the web.

Settings for people with access

The owner has two more switches behind the Settings gear in the Share window, under Settings for people with access. Both are on unless the owner turns them off:

"Editors can change permissions and share" — editors can add and remove people and change the link. They can't give anyone more than Editor, and they can't remove the owner.
"Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print, and copy" — when this is off, Download, Print, Make a copy and emailing the file disappear for viewers and commenters, and copying from the document is turned off for them. It can't stop someone from retyping or screenshotting what's on their screen.

Comments

Select some text in Writer, or a cell in Spreadsheets, and add a comment — with the comment button, Insert ▸ Comment, or Ctrl+Alt+M in Writer. Comments open in a panel on the right; the speech-bubble button in the title bar opens the comment history at any time.

Reply to keep the conversation in one thread. You can edit or delete your own comments; the owner can delete any comment.
Resolve a thread when it's done — it's hidden from the page but kept. Reopen it (or reply) to bring it back.
Filter the panel by Open, Resolved or For you.

@mentions and assigning

Type @ in a comment and pick a person to bring them in. When you mention someone in a new comment, you can tick "Assign to …" to make it their task — it then shows under For you for them.

If the person you mention can't open the document, you'll see a warning that they don't have access and won't be notified. If you're allowed to share, Share as commenter fixes that in one click.

Notifications

When	Bell	Email
Someone assigns you a comment	✓	✓
Someone @mentions you	✓	✓
Someone replies to a thread you started or replied to	✓
Someone comments on a document you own	✓

Notifications open the document right at the comment. You're never notified about your own comments. You can change what you're emailed about, document by document — see Notification settings.

Emoji reactions in Writer

For a quick 👍 without writing a comment, select some text in Writer and choose Insert ▸ Emoji reaction. See Emoji reactions.

Notification settings

Tools ▸ Notification settings — in Writer and in Spreadsheets — sets which emails you get about that document. Everyone chooses their own.

Comments — one of:
- All comments — a bell notification and an email for every comment and reply.
- Only yours (in Spreadsheets: Only comments that mention me or reply to me) — the table above: mentions, assignments and replies to your threads. This is the default.
- None — no comment emails. Mentions and assignments still show in the bell.
Changes to the document — Off, Email me right away or Email me a daily digest. Spreadsheets words it as Email me when changes are made: Right away, Daily digest or Off.

"Right away" emails come at most once every 15 minutes for a document, however much is changing; the daily digest arrives once a day, in the morning (UTC). Change emails say who edited and link to the document — they never include its content.

Notification settings are for people the document is shared with; someone who only has a link is told that only people it's shared with can set up notifications.

Suggestions in Writer

Commenters in Writer work in Suggesting mode: what they type, delete or reformat appears as a suggestion, marked with their name, instead of changing the document. Editors can switch to Suggesting themselves from the mode button or View ▸ Mode.

Every suggestion also appears as a card in the comments panel, where editors can accept or reject it — or all of them at once with Tools ▸ Review suggested edits. People can reply to a suggestion like any comment. Downloading as Word (.docx) keeps pending suggestions as tracked changes; other formats leave them out.

Version history

Editors can see every earlier version: File ▸ Version history ▸ See version history (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H), or the clock button in the title bar.

Versions are saved automatically while people edit — at most one every 30 minutes. Up to 200 automatic versions are kept for each document; after that the oldest automatic ones are removed first.
Name a version to keep it for good: File ▸ Version history ▸ Name current version, or name any version in the list. Named versions are never removed automatically. Tick Only show named versions to hide the rest.
Click a version to look at it. In Writer, tick Show changes to see what's different from the current document, and Back to current version to return.
Restore a version to make it the current one for everyone. You're asked "Restore this version?" first; the content you're replacing stays in version history, and the restore is saved as a named version, "Restored from …".

Activity dashboard

Editors can open the Activity dashboard — Tools ▸ Activity dashboard in Writer, File ▸ Activity dashboard in Spreadsheets — to see Viewers — who has opened the document, when they last did and how many times — and Editors — who has changed it and when. Only people who opened it while signed in to SingleSign are listed.

In Writer, View ▸ Show editors answers a different question — who wrote the text in a particular paragraph. See Show editors.

Working offline

When you're signed in, a copy of each document you open is kept in your browser on that device. If your connection drops:

keep working — the title bar says "Offline — changes saved on this device", then "Offline — reconnecting…" while it tries again;
everything you did is sent as soon as you're back online, and merges with what other people changed in the meantime;
you can open a document with no connection at all, as long as you've opened it on that device before. A document you've never opened there says "You are offline and this document is not saved on this device yet."

People using a link without signing in don't get an offline copy.

Stars, the trash and making copies

Star a document from the star next to its name, or from Add to Starred on the home page. Stars are yours alone; your Starred list is on the Writer and Spreadsheets home pages.
Move to trash (owners): File ▸ Move to trash, or Remove on the home page. Trashed documents are listed under Trash on the home page and in Documents. Restore one, or Delete forever. Anything left in the trash is deleted forever after 30 days.
While a document is in the trash, nobody else can open it — its links stop working too — until you restore it.
Delete forever removes the document with its comments and version history. It can't be undone.
Make a copy creates "Copy of …" owned by you, with the content as it is now. Comments and version history aren't copied.

Sending a document in an email

When you write a message in SingleSign Mail, the Insert from Documents button in the compose window (also in the Ctrl+K command menu) opens your Documents — Recent, My files and Shared with me, with search.

Insert as: Link (the default) adds a Writer document or spreadsheet as a link in the message.
Insert as: Attachment attaches a copy of the file instead: Writer documents as Word (.docx) or OpenDocument (.odt), spreadsheets as Excel (.xlsx), CSV (the first sheet) or PDF. Uploaded files are always attached. Attachments are limited to 25 MB.

Checking access when you send. If you've added a document as a link and some recipients can't open it, you're asked before the message goes:

Recipients with a SingleSign account can be shared the document as Viewer, Commenter or Editor.
Recipients outside SingleSign can't be invited, so you choose between Anyone with the link can view, comment or edit (the link in your message then works for them) and Don't give them access.
Then Share and send, Send without sharing, or Cancel to go back to the message.

If you aren't allowed to change who can open the document, the message says so and suggests asking the owner; Send anyway sends it as it is. Sharing only ever applies to the documents in that message.

How this fits with Documents

Every Writer document and spreadsheet is a file in Documents at email.singlesign.com/documents, in the mailbox that owns it.

New ▸ Writer document and New ▸ Spreadsheet (blank or from a template) create one in the folder you're looking at. Move it to another folder from the folder button in its title bar or File ▸ Move.
Sharing a folder shares everything inside it — documents, spreadsheets and subfolders included. If someone has access both directly and through a folder, they get whichever role is stronger. Folder links are always view-only.
Shared with me in Documents lists everything other people have shared with you, and Recent lists the Writer documents and spreadsheets you've opened or edited lately.
A Writer document's or spreadsheet's menu in Documents has Open in new tab, Rename, Move, Share, Make a copy, Download as…, Email as attachment, Add to Starred and Move to trash.
Uploaded Word, Excel, OpenDocument, CSV and text files have Open with Writer or Open with Spreadsheets, which saves an editable copy next to the original and opens it. Open in Writer and Open in Spreadsheets do the same for email attachments, saving the copy in My files.
Files you upload — Word, Excel and PDF files, for example — can be shared too, as Viewer or Editor. Commenting, suggestions, version history and the trash are for Writer documents and spreadsheets.
Storage. Documents, spreadsheets and the images in them count toward the owner's mailbox storage. You can always keep editing when the mailbox is full, but you can't create new documents or add images until you free up space. See Storage & Limits.

Company and personal mailboxes each have their own Documents — see Your Accounts & Organizations.