OneDrive & SharePoint¶

Refractions edits Prism charts in documents that live on OneDrive or SharePoint, including SharePoint team sites and files shared through Teams, and puts the finished file back where it came from with one click.

How it works¶

Office for Mac keeps a cloud document in its own cache, not as a file on your Mac, so Refractions makes a short round trip:

1. Copy it here. Open the document from OneDrive or SharePoint as usual, then open the Refractions pane. It shows This document lives in the cloud. Click Continue on this Mac. Refractions saves a copy to ~/Documents/Refractions Local Copies/ and reopens the document from it.
2. Edit your charts. Everything works as in Usage. A bar at the bottom of the pane shows which SharePoint file this copy belongs to and how many charts are waiting to go back.
3. Put it back. Click Put back. The first time, your browser opens so you can sign in to Microsoft. Refractions then uploads the copy over the original. The upload is a new version of the same file, so its link, sharing and version history stay as they were.

Keep the round trip short: copy, edit, put back. While you work in the copy, changes your colleagues make to the original aren't in it.

If a colleague changed the original¶

Before uploading, Refractions checks whether the file on SharePoint changed since you made your copy. If it did, nothing is overwritten. The pane tells you a teammate changed the original and offers:

• Send charts only: Refractions puts just the charts you edited into the newer version on SharePoint. Anything else you changed in your copy (text, slides, formatting) stays behind. If the pane then asks you to, close your copy and reopen the document from SharePoint.
• If you inserted new charts, they can't be merged automatically. Use Reveal in Finder and upload the file yourself, or redo the insert in the current version.

If the file is locked¶

SharePoint refuses a new version while the file is checked out or locked by someone else. This is most common with Excel workbooks that colleagues have open. Your work stays safe in the copy. Click Try again when they're done.

Word and Excel¶

The round trip works the same way in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel.

• Supported files: .pptx, .docx, and .xlsx. The round trip doesn't support macro-enabled files (.pptm, .docm, .xlsm) or older formats (.ppt, .doc, .xls) yet. For those, use File → Save a Copy… to a folder on your Mac and upload the file yourself.
• Excel workbooks are more often open in someone else's Excel at the same time. Expect the locked message above more often, and put back promptly.

Privacy¶

Your document goes directly between your Mac and Microsoft 365. It never passes through Refractions servers, and we never see the file, its name, or your Microsoft sign-in. Your Microsoft sign-in is stored encrypted on your Mac. Refractions only writes to the one file you copied, and never over changes it hasn't checked first.

For IT admins: approve Refractions¶

Send this section to your Microsoft 365 administrator.

Why approval is needed¶

To put a file back on a SharePoint site, Refractions uses one Microsoft Graph permission, Files.ReadWrite.All (delegated). Since mid-2025, Microsoft's default consent policy doesn't let regular users approve this permission for third-party apps. An administrator approves it once for the organization. Until then, people see Need admin approval (or Approval required) when they sign in, and Put back reports that your IT admin hasn't approved Refractions.

What the permission allows¶

• Delegated only. Refractions acts as the signed-in person, never on its own. It can reach only files that person can already edit in SharePoint or OneDrive, and every change is recorded under their name in the file's version history and your audit log.
• One file at a time. The app writes only to the document the person copied, and each upload is guarded by an If-Match version check, so it never overwrites changes it hasn't seen.
• No Refractions servers involved. Documents and sign-in tokens stay between the Mac and Microsoft 365. Tokens are stored encrypted on the Mac.

How to approve¶

You need one of these roles: Cloud Application Administrator, Application Administrator, or Privileged Role Administrator (or Global Administrator).

Option 1: admin consent link. Open this link, sign in with your admin account, review the permission, and click Accept:

https://login.microsoftonline.com/organizations/adminconsent?client_id=191461f6-524a-4b70-b576-bdb1cece5341

After you accept, Microsoft may send the browser to a local page that doesn't load. The approval is already saved.

Option 2: Microsoft Entra admin center. This works once someone in your organization has tried to sign in to Refractions:

1. Go to entra.microsoft.com → Entra ID → Enterprise apps → All applications.
2. Search for Refractions and open it.
3. Under Security, select Permissions → Grant admin consent for your organization.

Option 3: approve requests. If your tenant has the admin consent workflow turned on, people can click Request approval when they sign in. Review requests under Enterprise apps → Admin consent requests.

Limiting who can use it (optional). In the Refractions enterprise app, open Properties, set Assignment required to Yes, then add the people or groups who should have access under Users and groups.

Microsoft's reference: Grant tenant-wide admin consent to an application.

Troubleshooting¶

• Put back says SharePoint didn't let Refractions write the file. Either your IT admin hasn't approved Refractions yet (see above), or you don't have edit rights to that file. Check that you can edit it in the browser.
• "Need admin approval" when signing in. Your organization needs to approve Refractions first. Forward the IT admin section above.
• The pane asks you to use File → Save a Copy. This version of Office can't hand the document to Refractions. Save a copy to your Mac, edit it, and upload it yourself.