Lock a document for editing
To prevent simultaneous edits to the same document by different users, when you open an Office document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Visio document) in Microsoft Office, or a PDF document in the Advanced PDF pane, that document is automatically locked for editing by other WorkZone users. Once you close the document (with or without making any edits to it), it is unlocked, allowing other WorkZone users to open and edit it.
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Documents that are automatically locked for editing have a pencil on their icon (for example,
for a Word document). Hover your mouse over the document icon to see who is currently editing this document. - To manually check the documents in and out, use the Check in or Check out options. See Check out and check in WorkZone documents.
Document lock
The document lock is active as long as the document remains open. Once you close the document, it becomes unlocked.
If WorkZone does not register that the document has been closed (for example, if the network connection is lost or the Microsoft Office program unexpectedly shuts down), the document lock will expire automatically after 10 minutes.
Important: Locking a document for editing (document lock) is not the same as the document state Locked (UL).
- The Locked (UL) document state is manually set by a user to prevent anyone from editing that document (including the user who changed the document state to Locked (UL) ).
- Locking a document for editing is an automatic process that only allows the first user who opened the document to edit and save it.
Saving changes to a document that is locked for editing
When you save any changes to your open Microsoft Office document, the Checked out field is updated with the date and time of the first time you saved your first changes and the Checked out by field will contain your WorkZone user name.
The Checked out date and time values are used to determine the existence of a new version of the Microsoft Office document. If draft versioning has been enabled in your WorkZone installation, the existing document versions are displayed in the Versions detail ribbon tab on the document detail page.
- The Checked out and Checked out by fields are not displayed in the document lists by default. You must add them manually.
- Draft versioning can be enabled by a system administrator in WorkZone Configurator (under Document > Draft versioning > Enable draft versioning).
Unlocking a document
When you close the document, it is updated in WorkZone and the Checked out and Checked out by fields are cleared:
A system administrator can unlock a document in the database, if another user needs the document immediately.
Locking non-Office documents
The document lock feature works only for Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Visio documents) opened in Microsoft Office, or for PDF documents opened in the Advanced PDF pane. For all other documents, for example, text files with the .txt extension, the Checked out and Checked out by fields will not be updated, and the document icon will not change. Also, users will not be informed when they are opening a document that is currently opened or being edited by another user.
If two or more WorkZone users save their changes on the same non-Office document, the last user to save will overwrite the changes of all other users.