Can you force a user to close out of a file in a co-authored file?

Question

Is there a way to force other users to close out of a file in the co-authoring environment?

We often have users "camp out" in our collaborative files - which affects file performance and formatting stability. (Sometimes they are in there for days and we cannot contact them to close out.)

I asked this in the MS Community forum and got this response (however, neither of these methods will help our situation):

Based on my test, you can select check out or check in to stop the document co-authoring. Reference: Check out or check in files in a document library - Microsoft Support. Or you can stop sharing the file to manage access then re-share the file to these users. Reference: Stop sharing OneDrive or SharePoint files or folders, or change permissions - Microsoft Support

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi @Graeme Tucker (SHIPLEY BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT),

Thank you for posting in this community.

I apologize and empathize that you are having problems. It is true that co-authoring allows multiple users to co-edit a document but sometimes it can make the document messy.

However, this is a default feature in SharePoint Online and we have no way to turn it off for now.

• As long as a user has Edit and above access to a file, they can co-edit the document, so regranting access doesn't solve the problem unless you set the user permissions to below Edit.
• Setting up file checkout is a widely used method to prevent file co-editing. This is because only checked-out users can edit the document, while other users can only read the document.

We are always looking for ways to improve SharePoint, and your feedback and suggestions are very valuable. We suggest that you make further suggestions on this SharePoint Feedback portal regarding the management of the co-authoring function. Your contribution will be highly appreciated.

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.