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You must have been using an old version of MS Office, or had it improperly configured. We use Office for real time collaboration on documents all the time. You can put a file on SharePoint, then have multiple users edit live using a mix of desktop, mobile, and web applications. The changes are immediately visible and this doesn't create different copies.

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> You can put a file on SharePoint

Everyone else just lets you multi edit without the steel-trap lock-in layer.

Who is everyone else? Google locks you in just as much as Microsoft.

How does Google lock you in when you could just export it as docx and move over anytime to Word/Libre?

You can even bulk download as many docs you like and there's even takeout.google.

You can also export files from Microsoft products. There is no difference in vendor lock in between Google and Microsoft.

The question is how do you export and use metadata from sharepoint that is useful? Documents are not where the lock in is.

Microsoft Office, Teams, and SharePoint have comprehensive APIs so you can export any metadata you want. It's no different from competing Google products in that regard.

Developer work is expensive and beyond most users abilities. File..save is not. It is very different.

You can do File, Save As in the Microsoft products as well. There's no significant difference.

Can confirm.

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