How to chat with your co-editors in real-time in Office Online?

As the name suggests, Office Online is an online office suite that helps the users create, edit and share the files over web. This is possible by using the lightweight web-browser versions of Office applications, including Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint. This feature is also available in Office.com/Setup 365 as well. The Office Online feature is helpful for the business and education clients who have shared/stored their documents in OneDrive for business or SharePoint Online. 

Office Online also incorporates People, OneDrive, Calendar and Outlook.com, which can be further accessed from a unified app switcher. Anyone can install the on-premises version of this amazing service, named Office Web Apps Server. The exciting features of Office Online are as follows:

· Open and edit Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets in Office Open XML formats on the web

· Converting PDF documents to Word documents

· Auto save word files

· Real time co-authoring and more

Office online supports all the latest versions of web browsers, including Internet Explorer 10 or later, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox alongside Safari for OS 10.8 or later. To access Office Online, you should have a Microsoft Account. 

How to start a chat

When you share a document with your co-worker or friends or classmates through OneDrive or SharePoint Online they can view and they get the option to edit and co-author at the same time. The feature becomes a wonder when multiple people are viewing the document at the same time. You can see their names in the list of co-editors on the top right corner of the browser. Additionally, you will also see a blue CHAT button next to the list of co-editors. 

When to chat and when to add document comments

Sometimes E-mails can be misused as a communication tools, it takes time to send and receive mails. This is when you use chat feature to communicate with others at that very moment. If you have any doubts then you can ask your co-worker or classmate right away. Once you close the document Chat history gets removed as it does not save anything (but if you want then you can copy and paste the chat somewhere).

If you want to attach a comment on a specific section of the document then use Comments (on the Review tab on the ribbon). Something related to the editing of the phrase or numbers can be added as a comment. Your comments get saved automatically, when you close the document and they can be replied too as well.

Source: http://www.apsense.com/article/how-to-chat-with-your-coeditors-in-realtime-in-office-online.html