User Cannot Co-Author in Excel

Question

There is a user that cannot co-author in Excel. Whenever they open an Excel file in Excel Online, it locks the file for anyone else. This has occurred in a variety of sites, and a variety of documents including brand-new spreadsheets. I'm guessing from everything I've read, they have an outdated version of Excel. I'm not sure how to check if that's the case.

Here is their Excel product details:

They have an Office 365 E5 license. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi Bryant,

Based on your description, your users have a co-authoring issue with Excel files in SharePoint sites and this happened in all the Excel file include new workbooks.

First of all, I noticed that your user is using an old Office desktop version which is Office 2016. Because the coauthoring feature of Excel workbook requires users to use the latest Microsoft 365 desktop application according tothis article. Since your user have E5 license, you can let the user to consider update to Microsoft 365 applications if the organization is allowed.

 

More importantly, please also share the following information with us at your convenience.

1: May I double confirm with you whether this co-author problem occur among all users or this particular use?

2: How about the other Office file, such as Word, PowerPoint? Is the co-author feature working as expected?

3: What is the detail error message about “File is locked”? You can also share a screenshot of the error

4: How about the Excel file in user’s OneDrive for business? Is the workbook able to edit in Excel for the web?

Generally, Excel for the web should be able to co authoring with out any issue. It could be caused by some settings or unsupported features in Excel workbook.

Here are some general scenarios you can have a look:

1: The Excel workbook in SharePoint Document library has been checked out. In this scenario, user will not able to edit workbook.

2: The Excel workbook file format need to be supported, such as .xlsx, .xlsm, or .xlsb format.

3: The SharePoint Document library is applied Information Rights Management (IRM) or Rights Management Service (RMS) as it will encrypt files. Set up Information Rights Management (IRM) in SharePoint admin center

For your additional information:

Excel file is locked for editing by another user

Best regards,

Dihao

Answer 2

Hi Bryant, 

Regarding to this question, may I know is there any update or concerns? If so, please feel free to post back here and share with us.

Best regards,

Dihao