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Michael Wang's avatar
Michael Wang
Copper Contributor
May 18, 2017
Solved

File locking issue

We are running an on-prem Sharepoint 2013 standard edition and we recently upgraded our users to O365 Office 2016.  Soon after the Office 2016 upgrade, many users are reporting that they are having p...
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  • Stewart Harris's avatar
    Stewart Harris
    Nov 09, 2017

    Please find below the problem, cause and resolution provided by Microsoft..

    Note : - we do not use check in - check out in our environment...

    Hope this helps

    Stewart

     

    PROBLEM

    ================================

    there are some users report of upload failed issue, sometimes, it can be completed by retry, some time, it will always failed.

    Also many different symptoms when saving on both office and SP side which point to lock issue.

     

    CAUSE  & RESOLUTION

    =================================

    CAUSE: web client service add lock on the file

    RESOLUTION: since no need for checkout/checkin, add below registry to disable the lock function of web client service but keep all other functions like explorer view support

                                    HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters\SupportLocking=0

     

    ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

    ================================================

    Registry to disable lock function when web client service is started:

    1. Start webclient service on user side
    2. Find registry: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters on their machines.
    3. Find value: SupportLocking(if no, please add), set its value to 0, want to just disable lock feature.

     

Alan Marshall's avatar
Alan Marshall
Iron Contributor
Jul 13, 2018

If you use a tool to migrate content to Office 365 like Sharegate, it will transfer the document library settings that you had in your on-premises site, one of the key settings is require check in/out as this disables multi-user editing and OneDrive sync shows all the files as locked.  If you turn this off, it will make editing in OneDrive sync work but won't check back in existing files, you will need to get users to check these in or take ownership of the files and check them all in.

If you have a required column that is not set by the user when they add the file, it will mark it as requiring attention and I have noticed that this can also put the file in a checked out state.

  • Alan Marshall's avatar
    Alan Marshall
    Iron Contributor
    Jul 13, 2018

    • Alan Marshall's avatar
      Alan Marshall
      Iron Contributor
      Jul 13, 2018
      If you open a document that was missing data, it will be read only even if it was check out to you. If you set the value in the SharePoint list to remove the "Required info" it still remain checked out and the user needs to check it in to edit it.
      The server properties also moved from the header in Word to the File menu under properties so not obvious to users.
      I would recommend setting a default on required meta data if you can and educate users on setting properties in Office Documents.

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