Auto-save creating problems on a SharePoint site with Content Approval enabled

[WarrenGibbs]

We use a SharePoint site to store official internal documents for our organization.   An approval workflow is in place to ensure any changes are authorised before the document is made available for general viewing.

This achieved with content approval enabled on the site.  A limited number of user have contribute access to create and modify documents - all remaining users have read only access.  All documents are created in Word.

The problem, is if any of the users with Contribute access opens an approved document (for the purpose of viewing).   The chance of Word (app, browser or Teams) triggering autosave whilst the document is open is very high - and as a result the status of this approved document, reverts to 'Draft' (requiring re-approval).

Although I can enable the option 'Require documents to be checked out before they can be edited' - it means that our assigned contributors cannot co-author required document changes.

Am I missing something is this the only solution to the problem?

Thanks

Warren.

[#2]

We are having exact same issue, have you come across any alternate solution to solve this problem?

Thank You in advance!

[#3]

Hi @Nilang Shah 

Unfortunately, no :(

We needed to resort to having Editors check out documents to make any required changes in order to keep things under control. 

In the end the requirement for multiple editors to collaborate on one document was relatively low.   However, the workaround we used on those few documents requiring multiple Editor collaboration (once checked out) was for the user to collaborate/share the document via OneDrive and then move the finished document back into SharePoint (replacing the original document) - then checking it back in.

Best Regards

Warren.