Word and Excel together in the browser: the add-on for everything else your choir needs

Your choir keeps events, programmes, attendance, sheet music, members and finances in Chorilo. These have their own features, and that is where they belong. That means Chorilo covers your choir all round. For anything beyond that, you can now even edit Word and Excel together in the browser, right in your choir's file storage: several people open the same file, write in it at the same time and see each other's changes straight away. Nobody has to download anything, send it by email or upload it again, and neither Word nor Excel has to be installed on the device.

What do choirs need Word and Excel in the browser for?

Every choir has documents that do not fit into any fixed feature. In Word, these include the funding application to the city or a foundation, the letter to potential sponsors, the press release for the concert, the texts for the programme booklet, the anniversary publication or the revised statutes. Such texts rarely come from one person: one writes, a second adds the figures, a third proofreads.

In Excel, these are lists and calculations for special occasions: the room list and car pools for the choir tour, the budget for a big concert project, or the inventory of choir clothing and equipment. The biggest gain is an unspectacular one: there is only one version left. Nobody asks any more whether “funding_application_final_new2.docx” really is the current file.

What is better kept in Chorilo?

Word and Excel add to Chorilo; they do not replace any feature. You plan rehearsals and concerts as events, you put the programme together on the event, attendance and responses run through events, income and expenses through the cash book, and you hand out tasks directly on the event. There, Chorilo sends reminders and everyone sees the same state. A spreadsheet alongside cannot do that and would quickly be out of date.

How does editing together in the browser work?

You click a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet in the file storage, and it opens directly in the editor. At the top right you can see who currently has it open. As soon as someone types, the change appears for everyone else. In Word you see the other person's cursor with their name, and in Excel a coloured frame around the cell they are working in. So you notice while writing where someone else is busy, and you stay out of each other's way.

Undo only takes back your own steps. If you make a typing mistake, the work of the others stays untouched. Anyone who may only view a file can follow along live but cannot change anything. If two people change the same cell in Excel, the last entry counts.

Does it stay a real Word or Excel file?

Yes. Chorilo only changes in the file what you change. Everything else stays exactly as it was, including things the editor cannot edit itself, such as tables of contents, footnotes, headers and footers, charts or conditional formatting. If you later open the file in Word or Excel on your computer, it looks as it did before, just with your changes. This applies to Word documents (.docx) and Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx) up to 30 MB. Older formats such as .doc and .xls are downloaded as usual.

What can the Word and Excel editors do?

In the Word editor you have paragraph styles and headings, fonts, colours, bullets and numbering, tables, images, links and page breaks. The page keeps its paper width, so text wraps the same way as in Word.

The Excel editor calculates with around 150 functions. You type formulas such as =SUM(B2:B10), and Excel then opens the file with the same formulas. On top of that come number formats for currency, percentages and dates, borders and colours, merged cells, several sheets, filling by dragging, and copying and pasting between Chorilo and Excel. It also works with your finger in a phone browser. In the Chorilo app, you continue to open files in another application.

How do documents and Chorilo work together?

You keep maintaining events and programmes in Chorilo. If you need them in a document, such as the concert dates in a funding application or the pieces in the programme booklet, you bring them in through the Insert menu with date, time and place, or with composer, arrangement and duration. If you like, new letters start from a template with a letterhead, logo, name and address. You can put your own templates in a folder called “Templates”.

With @ and a name you mention a member, who gets a notification when the file is saved. Mail merge turns one text into a combined document for all active members, one voice or a selection, for example for letters that go out by post. You can attach the finished file directly to an event or send it in a notification.

What happens to changes that have not been saved yet?

Saving is deliberately done with a button. Every save creates a new version, and everyone sees who saved. You can restore the previous state for 7 days. Anything not yet saved is also kept for 7 days, even if everyone closes the file. So you can stop in the evening, and someone else carries on at the same spot the next day.

Word, Excel and the Files app on the computer only see the saved state. If a new version comes in from outside, for example through an upload or the Files app, that version applies. If you have unsaved changes open at that point, Chorilo asks: you can save anyway, in which case the other state remains as a version, or store your version as a copy in the same folder. Unsaved changes from a closed file are dropped in this case.

Who may edit a file?

That depends on the rights of your folders. Without the right to edit, the file opens for viewing, copying and downloading only. For mentions, too, Chorilo only suggests members who are allowed to see the file.

How to get started

Open your choir's file storage in Chorilo and click a Word or Excel file. For a new document, choose “New” in the folder. All the steps are in the help page on editing in the browser. Try it with your next funding application: one file, everyone writes along, and nobody has to hunt for the latest version.