Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta is an easy-to-use Web-based program that helps you exchange business or personal information with the people you choose. Use Office Live Workspace to collaborate on documents, notes, spreadsheets, presentations, and lists — any information that is important to your business, friends, or family. People you invite to share your workspace can review, update, and comment on your files from any computer with an Internet connection.

Office Live Workspace offers endless opportunities to work for you in both your business and personal life. You can use your workspace to:

• Collaborate with colleagues Post business-critical information on your workspace and invite key team members to review and comment. Your workspace can become the information hub for the members of your sales team located in different states. Or your workspace can act as the repository for the latest drafts of your team's plans for new business, enabling team members to review or change the documents as needed.

• Coordinate school activities Teachers can use Office Live Workspace to post calendars, reading assignments, or project instructions. They can then invite students, faculty, or parents to access the workspace and keep abreast of the latest classroom activities. Students can set up Office Live Workspace to coordinate team projects and post their homework.

• Access a family to-do list from any computer It's easy to stay in touch using Office Live Workspace. Create a to-do list, assign tasks, and post the list on your family workspace. Any family member whom you invite to share it can review and update the list from a computer with an Internet connection at work, home, or school.

To set up Office Live Workspace, visit Microsoft Office Live Workspace, and follow the sign-up instructions. It takes just a few clicks to organize your workspace to fit your needs.

Create a new workspace

You can create a blank workspace that you customize to meet your needs. Or you can create a workspace that is preformatted with documents, notes, lists, and spreadsheets geared for a specific purpose.

To create a new workspace:

1. In Office Live Workspace, on the left navigation bar, click New Workspace.

2. In the Create a new workspace dialog box, click one of the following workspaces:

   • Blank workspace Customize this empty workspace by adding your own workspace, folders, documents, notes, and lists.

   • Class Workspace Organize your class materials, notes, and assignments.

   • Essay Workspace Track and manage everything you need to plan and write an essay or thesis.

   • Event Workspace Plan a successful event at home or at work.

   • Household Workspace Create budgets, assign tasks, and share information with family members or housemates.

   • Job Search Workspace Organize your job search information and job applications, and prepare for interviews.

   • Meeting Workspace Improve meeting productivity with a contact list, a meeting agenda, and brainstorming notes.

   • Project Workspace Plan and manage a project for work, home, or school.

   • School Workspace Organize all of your school information.

   • Sports Team Workspace Share sports team information with players, parents, and fans.

   • Study Group Workspace Organize and manage your school study group or team project.

   • Travel Workspace Organize and plan a business trip or vacation.

Add documents to your workspace

  Watch the demo (1:15) 

You can get started right away by adding new documents to your workspace. On the toolbar, click Add Document, and post one or more documents to any workspace, including Microsoft Office Excel worksheets, Microsoft Office Word documents, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentations.

Note : The first time you try to add multiple documents at one time to a workspace, you will be prompted to install Microsoft Silverlight.

The document files that you add can be up to 25 MB in size. Office Live Workspace provides you with a total of 5 GB of storage space. If the size of your site approaches the maximum storage space, you are notified that you may exceed your storage limit the next time you try to save or upload a document.

For more information about adding documents, see Add documents to your workspace.

Create notes, lists, and Office documents

Use Office Live Workspace to capture notes or to create a list to track, for example, your contacts, tasks, or dates. You can also open Office Excel worksheets, Office Word documents, and Office PowerPoint presentations right from your workspace.

Note-taking in your workspace

For note-taking, Office Live Workspace provides helpful formatting tools that make it easy to create a document for the Web. Capture critical meeting decisions, class notes, or an issue that you need to keep top-of-mind. You can then access your notes from any computer that has an Internet connection. Or you can share your notes with the people you choose so that they can benefit from your note-taking diligence.

As you type text in your note, use the formatting tools that appear on the note's toolbar. These handy tools help you work with text fonts, font styles, font sizing, alignment, text color, indent levels, and bullet and numbering features.

To learn more about notes, see Create or delete a note.

Using lists in your workspace

  Watch the demo (1:49) 

Lists are Web documents that feature a familiar row and column format. You can create a blank list and then customize the column headers to meet your needs. Or you can select one of the following preformatted lists:

•  Task List Use the Task List to create a family project to-do list, or assign team members responsibilities for a team presentation. Include key due dates for each task, and assign some tasks high priority.

•  Contact List Keep track of names, addresses, telephone and mobile phone numbers, and e-mail addresses.

•  Event List Record the location, start time, and end time of your key business, social, and family events.

To learn more about lists, see Create, move, or delete a list.

Using Office documents in your workspace

You can start Office Excel, Office Word, or Office PowerPoint right from your Web-based workspace:

1. In Office Live Workspace, on the left navigation bar under My Workspaces, click Documents.

2. On the toolbar, click New, and then click Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation.



3. If you receive a security warning, read the warning, and then click OK.

4. After you make changes to the document, click Save.

5. In the Save As dialog box, in the File name box, type a name for your document.

6. Click Save. The document appears in the Documents workspace.

To improve the integration of Microsoft Office programs in your workspace, you can install the Office Live Update for Microsoft Office. On the left navigation bar under My Workspaces, click Documents, and on the toolbar, click Install Office Live Update.

Watch the demo (2:00)

For more information about the Office Live Update, see Improve integration between Office Live Workspace and Microsoft Office programs.

Use folders to organize your workspaces and documents

To quickly find the information that you need, you can use folders to organize your workspace and documents. On the actions bar, click New, and then click Folder.

Create a folder to organize workspaces with a similar theme, such as all workspaces containing class notes or lab projects for a biochemistry seminar. Or create folders within a workspace to organize your documents. If you are a teacher, you can create a workspace for your classroom, and then create a folder for each student in your class to store, for example, homework assignments or grades.

For more information about using folders, see Organize your documents and workspaces.

Share your workspace with others

No matter how you set up Office Live Workspace, you and the people you select can access content in your workspace from any computer that has an Internet connection. You can choose up to 100 people to share with, and you can decide whether someone can revise and comment on a workspace and its contents or just review and comment.

To invite others to share a workspace or document:

1. In Office Live Workspace, on the left navigation bar, select the workspace that you want to share with others. Alternatively, select Documents, and then select the document that you want to share.

2. In the upper-right corner, click the arrow next to Share. In the drop-down menu that appears, select Share Document if you are sharing a single document. To share an entire workspace, select Share Workspace .A sharing pane appears.



3. Do one or both of the following:

   • In the Editors text box, add the e-mail addresses of people whom you want to give read/write access to your workspace or document. Editors are able to make changes to your content, add comments, or delete documents. They can also review all changes and comments from everybody who has sharing privileges.

   • In the Viewers text box, add the e-mail addresses of people whom you want to give read-only access to your workspace or document. Viewers can see all workspace content, including comments and revisions made by others who have sharing access. Viewers can add their own comments, but they cannot make any changes to the text.

4. If you want to allow your invitation recipients to see your content without signing in to Office Live Workspace, select Let everyone view this without signing in. For more information, see Invite others to preview a shared workspace or document.

5. In the text box next to Message, you can type a message up to 1,024 characters long that explains what you need the recipients to review. Message text appears in the body of the invitation e-mail message.

6. Click Send. Your sharing invitation will be sent by e-mail. The body of the e-mail message contains a hyperlink to your shared workspace or document.

To learn more about sharing, read Share workspaces and documents using Office Live Workspace.

Restore deleted documents or previous versions

If you delete items from your workspace, and you want to restore the deleted items at a later time, Office Live Workspace makes it easy to restore the deleted workspace or document. Anything that you delete is stored in the Deleted Items workspace for 30 days before it is permanently removed from your site.

To learn more, see Delete or restore workspace documents.

You may find that you gave Editor access to someone who, for example, made extensive changes to your sales document using dated sales figures. You'll save time and frustration by simply restoring an earlier version of your sales document that contains the latest sales figures.

Watch the demo (1:21)

To learn more about versioning, see Manage earlier versions of a document.