Forum Discussion
snyderdavida
Aug 13, 2018Brass Contributor
"Error:The file is locked" when using Office Online within SharePoint Online
At a current client I am seeing this scenario play out often: 1) User clicks on an Office document in a SPO document library, and it opens in a new tab in the associated Office Online app. They m...
William_Glynn
Aug 22, 2018Copper Contributor
This happens to us as well in SPO. I've searched for a lot of solutions but, no. nothing that you could reply to a user of your site to say 'File is fixed'!
One solution offered was wait, 10 to 30 min. (try telling that to an annoyed user!!)
it works the odd time.
But i have had some cases last 24hrs before the lock finally went away. (even after a user restarted and went home for the day!)
A menu item for admins to unlock 'short term' locks would be useful!
Edit**
forgot to include this!:
https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/93965/Force-SharePoint-Document-Unlocked-Checked-In
seems like they had something for on-premise SP so there is a slim hope they have something similar for SPO
- Michael ButterfieldAug 22, 2018Iron Contributor
We've also been experiencing this problem more and more, where a users closes a document and then tries to move, rename or delete it and it says it's locked.
Presumably it thinks it's still open somewhere so it's being held in the browser memory, and the only way to fix it is to come back to it the next day!
I have logged a service request with MS about this so they are looking in to it.
- barbaracummingsNov 26, 2019Copper ContributorANy resolutions? I have run into the same issue, over a yer later 😞
- SkinnyPeteNov 27, 2019Copper Contributor
barbaracummings No change, still experiencing the same issue.
- snyderdavidaAug 23, 2018Brass Contributor
For what it's worth, Microsoft has acknowledged this was an issue and claims to have resolved it. In my preliminary tests, it does seem to be resolved. Fingers crossed it continues to be!
"This issue was posted to the Service Health Dashboard (SHD) as incident SP146930 starting at Aug 21 2018 3:52 PM (UTC). The user experience of this incident is : Users were unable to move or delete Microsoft Word documents.
Now, Service Health Dashboard has indicated that issue SP146930 has been resolved as of: Wednesday, August 22, 2018, at 3:26 PM UTC. If you are still experiencing an issue, please post a new thread on our forum."
- Matt WestonAug 23, 2018Iron Contributor
I have seen this issue, albeit rarely, so I've never seen it as enough of an issue to raise it formally with Microsoft. The conditions under which I saw this was when a document was created in Word Online, i.e. someone just clicked New Word Document in a document library, and then tried to open it in Microsoft Word.
The lock persists for approx 10 minutes, so I usually advise my users that it's time for a coffee break and when they come back it's unlocked again. Not really a fix, just an observation from encountering the same issue.