'Another author is editing this shape' icon won't go away

Question

Multiple users were simultaneously working on a Visio file stored on SharePoint. The users changes were all saved with no issues, and everyone closed Visio.

When I open this file, I still see an icon beside the shapes edited by the others, indicating that "another author is editing this shape". It's been over a week. I need to publish this file to a wide audience, but I don't want to with this pesky icon everywhere. Is there any way I can remove it?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Hi @Sean V ,
Can you see the lock shape user name? As shown in the following picture:

Did you open the file in browser or desktop app?
I suggest you also check if any users open the file in desktop, try to close all from desktop.

You can also try to ask users clear cache in browser.

Try these methods and let me know the result, I'm glad to help you.

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Answer 2

For me, the icon showed 'Unknown Author' as the editor and so locating the person and having them close the document, etc was not possible.

Solution (for me) was to

• right click the tab and select duplicate
• delete the original tab
• Rename the new tab (I used a new name for the new tab to avoid any issue that the old name may resurface)

Could have also saved the file with a new name, etc but everyone knows where this file is now so playing with the tab was easier.

Answer 3

As I had 10 or more tabs duplicating and renaming them (which works as described above) seemed to be to much hassle.
I tried the following and it did work for me:

• in SharePoint rename the file (I did add a "_")
• open file to check if the symbols did go away
• rename the file to its original

Done...