Excel 2016 Force Legacy Workbook Sharing or Ribbon button with Policy?

Hello all,

I am trying to migrate a bunch of users to Office 2016. Upon doing this i noticed that the Share Workbook functionality in Excel 2016 has been replaced with co-authoring.
We use the share workbook functionality for editing files with multiple users on a local network. Thus we are obligated to use the Legacy Workbook Sharing.

1. Is there a way to use a Office Policy to ensure co-authoring is disabled and will this enable the Legacy workbook sharing?

2. If not; Is there a policy or another way to enforce the Share Workbook (Legacy) button in the Ribbon for all domain users?

Hi there
perhaps I've mis-inderstood something here -- but why can't you just have those work sheets on a shared drive / directory on your LAN -- access restricted to those that need it. I think normal file sharing will lock file for update by other people if someone is using it in update mode.

Maybe I've mis-understood the concept because simple file sharing IMO would just do the trick.

Cheers
jimbo

Hello Jimbo45,

Thanks for your reply. The Shared Workbook functionality doesn't work like that.
If i share a workbook on the LAN multiple users can work on it at the same time.
We have used this functionality from Office 2003 up until Office 2013. But ever since Office 2016 Microsoft wants to force everyone to use Co-authoring. So the original Share Workbook Functionality is hidden away for users and can no longer easily be used unless you go out of your way to add the "Share Workbook (Legacy)" option to the users Ribbon.

I am looking for a way to do this for all users by using something like a policy.

An alternative would be if it was possible to disable Co-authoring on all these machines so the Legacy Share workbook functionality is used automatically (but so far i have not been able to find anything regarding this method).