If you use Microsoft Hotmail, you can avoid the difficulties of sending around e-mail attachments when you want to distribute or collaborate on Microsoft Office documents. The Office Docs feature in Hotmail uses Microsoft Office Web Apps to store the document online: a single copy of the document for your e-mail recipients to view or edit.
Send an attachment
Sign in to Hotmail, compose your message, and attach the document as usual. Before you send the message, Hotmail gives you an opportunity to save the document on your SkyDrive (click Send as online doc). When your recipients click the link in the message, the document opens in their web browser. By default, they have permission to make changes to the document in the browser, or open the document in their Office desktop application.
Go straight to Office Docs
Now that you know how this works, the next time you want to share a document, skip the attachment, and go straight to Office docs:
- Sign in to Hotmail as you normally do (for example, go to hotmail.com, sign in, and start a new message.
- Compose your message, and in the To box, type recipients.
- Click Office docs, click the document you want to share, and then click Open.
- Click the Save files on SkyDrive tab.
The document is uploaded to your SkyDrive. If you selected more than one document, a folder is created for them.
- If you change your mind, click the Remove icon to delete the document from your SkyDrive.
- Click Send.
Notes
- Creating online documents in Hotmail is supported for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents only.
- This feature requires Microsoft Silverlight. For more information, see Install Silverlight for Office.
- This feature is not yet available in all geographical regions.
More information
For more information about working with Office documents in Hotmail, see:
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