How to embed Excel Workbook in Oultlook 2007 and edit Spreadsheet

[chriso]

how would you embed an excel Workbook into an Outlook 2007 message where the workbook would be editable by the reciever and then the sender? I want to be able to send the spreadsheet back and forth and complete edits??

Thanks
ChrisO

[Ken Puls]

I wouldn't.

I'd resort to one of two options:

1. I'd email the workbook as an attachement and ask them to send it to each person in order
2. I'd try out Windows Live Skydrive, and share the workbook that way

To be honst, I don't know if you can even embed an editable version of the workbook, but it sounds like a recipe for disaster if you could.

[chriso]

Thank You
I wanted to try to avoid the hole attaching thing and edit the spreadsheet in the email.

[Ken Puls]

You know, I think that there might be a way to deal with this using Windows Live Skydrive and Excel Webapp. If I'm right, what you'd need to do is:

• Create a Windows Live (hotmail) account if you don't already have one
• Go into the Skydrive portion and create a folder
• Invite the people you want to be able to edit your document
• After doing the above change the folder permissions to public (need to do this to share it out)
• Upload your workbook to the folder
• Get the embedding link (iFrame)
• Create a full HTML email with the iFrame embedded

What this would do is send a preview of the workbook in the email. By clicking the "edit" link, they should be taken to the webpage where they can edit the workbook on Skydrive. This way you'd only have one copy of the workbook, and every time they opened the email it would be up to date.

The key issues are these:

• WebApp doesn't render all Excel features
• Some Excel features actually prevent workbooks from being opened in WebApp (data validation, macros, etc..)
• The workbook must be shared in a public folder to do this. While uninvited users won't be able to edit, they could view it if they find the link
• Creating a full html email in Outlook to make the iFrame link go live is awkward

If it sounds like something that you'd like to puruse, let me know and I can work out the instructions for you.

[Ken Puls]

Argh... looked into this a bit more, and it appears that you can't embed an iFrame into an Outlook email. That is really unfortunate.