Office Files on OneDrive for Business "locked for editing" -- how and where?

Question

One of the great features in recent years with OneDrive and OneDrive for Business is that it now supports multiple points of simultaneous collaborative access for various Office file types by simply turning on Autosave. This puts it a realtime updating mode where every change is saved as it's made and shared with all other computers that have the same file open. This can include different users or the same user accessing the file from multiple computers. The second case is hugely useful to ensure if that user forgets to close the document on one PC (say his or her desktop), it's still accessible from the road on the laptop.

So with that capability, how is it even possible to still get these productivity destroying messages, "The file is locked for editing by <user>" with the old options of "View a read-only copy" or "Save and edit a copy of the file." This doesn't happen all the time, but often enough that it's become a serious headache, maybe 3-4% of the times a user has a file open (but with hundreds of files being opened every week, that's still a far-too-common occurrence). I assume this indicates something has become corrupted and is preventing shared access to the file. How does this occur? Are there any steps we can take to reduce the risk or force a resolution remotely when it happens?

This seems to happen most often with Excel files, but I don't know if that's because it is more likely with Excel or if our users just happen to use Excel more than Word.

While the main experience I have with this issue is in OneDrive for Business, I believe (but not 100% sure) that this happens in personal OneDrive too. I've had users report they have had the same problem for personal files.

Highly related, because it only says the user, how can we tell where OneDrive thinks the file is open? Most of our users have multiple PC's (some of us use 4 or more, including VM's) and the message is most often to a user that he or she is the person who has the file open. It doesn't do me any good to tell me that I have a file open -- I need to know on what PC the file is open. Is it possible to have the message show the computer name instead of the user or have it include both?

Answer 1

Hi,

You can check this thread.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/onedrive-docs-locked-for-editing-by-another-user/623d18ff-00ca-45fd-888c-392ccdb19758

Here are some adjustment might help:

1. Disable Check in and Check out in their OneDrive online and see if the issue persists: log in to Portal >OneDrive> Return to Classic OneDrive(left bottom of the page) > Settings(top-right of the page) > Site Libraries and Lists > choose the folder that have this issue > Versioning Settings > choose NO under Require documents to be checked out before they can be edited? > OK.
2. Check the status of Use office to sync Office files that I open in OneDrive and it should be enabled by defult and please keep it enabled. right-click on OneDrive icon and select Settings>Office, check the Use office to sync Office files that I open.

Answer 2

Hi, @GraniteStateColin
Try the methods in the following links: excel-file-is-locked-for-editingthese methods may be closer to the problem.
Regarding the second problem, the error message is changed to the computer name, and the basic function of OneDrive cannot be implemented.

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Answer 3

Did you ever find a solution to this problem? I'm facing exactly the same thing at the moment.