Microsoft Teams not closing document

[AileenJ]

Hi!

I'm having a problem with closing an excel file. I'm in a group with my classmates, and the teacher has added a tab called excel. This is next to the tab called 'files' When I open this tab, it automatically opens a file that has been added by my classmates. I can't seem to close the file, since there's no option given to close it. In the tab called files you can now see that I edited the file, which I didn't do.

How can I solve this issue?

Thanks in advance,

Aileen J.

[#2]

Because office online is used to open files in teams sometime ago they made it open in edit mode by default so this can happen from time to time and you can’t really disable it.

Pretty sure there was a roadmap item or something they were working on to allow you to chose to open a document with the client app instead but even then with auto save this could also edit when opening so that would have to be disabled.

Another option could be to sync the files to your local computer with the onedrive client. Then you can open files there using office apps and turn off auto save. There is also an option in the onedrive client that lets you open files locally instead of the cloud then upload the changes when you save the document but this can introduce file conflicts on heavy collaborated documents

[#3]

@Chris Webb 

I'm afraid I seem to be having the exact same problem a year later. And if there is a 'roadmap' is that something that users of Teams can easily access?

[#4]

Hi Aileen, we have the same issue here. Users complain about not being able to close Excel documents clicked in Teams tabs. Since you posted last year, maybe you found a solution?
Kind regards,

[#5]

This is just something users have to get used too. The cloud is always online, always open. Files edit in real time, save in real time etc. There is no more "Close" per say. Tabs in Teams are just online web views of files with office online so it's going to edit live. This allows for co-authoring and multiple people using the document at the same time etc.

The only way to edit documents offline is to use sync, and turn off the option in the sync client to Use Office to sync files. Otherwise opening files with auto save off will lock the file and prevent others from opening etc. But you also run the risk of sync issues if you open offline and then save after making changes as others can make changes at the same time.

Anyway, bottom line is users have to get used to the new way of working on cloud documents and just moving away from documents and not having to "Save" or "Close" them. It's an adjustment but they will get used to it.

[#6]

Thank you Chris for your reply.

I thought that whether a document is hosted in the cloud or on a "regular" server does not make things different: I still "open" and "close" the document, and the server allocates more physical resources when the document is "opened" than when it is not. If what you say is true, would that mean that cloud servers require much more computing resources to hosts 1'000 documents than regular servers? (you seem to say they are always "open")

Same goes with the "save" function. I cannot find a technical requirement or constraint that makes this specifically a "cloud" feature. I have seen many applications implement continuous saving without the cloud, for decades. A good example of this is Onenote. Wouldn't this contradict what you proposed?

On the other side, I also think it is not a good practice to tell users to just accept things as they are and get used to it when they notice something wrong. If a user interface shows a button labelled "close" when a document is opened, and clicking on this button does nothing, I think it is a failure from the editor, and that should be fixed.

Of course, the editor could simply remove the button, as you implied, but that would likely make users' experience even worse. Or it could make the button actually work as intended, thus letting users close a document and return to whatever they were doing before opening it.

In summary, I am not sure I can agree with your proposition :)

[#7]

@AileenJ  - I've run into this also - it seems that someone didn't set the documents pages to scale properly.  Move the entire Teams window pane to where you can make it wider, and several other buttons may appear - the close button will be there, farthest on the right.  If you can't access a wider monitor or screen, I'm afraid I have found no resolution.  It's really annoying, and it happens in every document - Word, Excel, whatever - that you open.  From other similar problem posts I have read, it seems it has to do with them opening automatically into Edit or Read View - you might try looking for keyboard shortcuts to closing out of different views?