Collaboration
Real-time multiplayer editing — live presence, edits that sync as they happen, per-user undo, and named version history you can restore.
Sheets are multiplayer. Several people can open the same workbook and edit it at once, with changes syncing live and each person's presence visible. This page explains how collaboration works and how to use version history. The model is described in ADR-0047 (real-time sheet collaboration).
#Live editing and presence
When you open a shared sheet, Flax subscribes you to a live stream of the workbook. Your edits are sent as small operations and fan out to everyone else immediately; theirs arrive the same way. You see collaborators as coloured presence markers showing who is on which tab and what they have selected.
Because a spreadsheet is a keyed map of cells rather than one text buffer, edits to different cells never conflict. When two people edit the same cell, the last write to arrive at the server wins, so everyone converges on the same state.
Note
Editing requires edit access to the sheet. If you have view-only access you can open and follow along, but your edits are rejected.
#Per-user undo
Undo (⌘Z) rolls back your own most recent change, even in a busy shared sheet — it will not reach across and revert what a collaborator did. See Editing for the full set of editing shortcuts.
#Autosave and drafts
Edits persist automatically: the live session is the working copy, and Flax writes it back to storage shortly after activity settles or when the last collaborator leaves. A local draft is kept in your browser as an offline fallback.
#Version history
Beyond autosave, you can capture named checkpoints:
- Save creates a named version and flushes the current state.
- History lists past versions, newest first, with who saved each one.
- Restore rewrites the sheet's content from a chosen version.
Restoring changes content only, and the action is recorded in the audit log.
#Sharing
Who can view or edit a sheet is controlled by its visibility (private, team, or organization) and the usual permission model. See Sharing and permissions.