Allow a site owner to kick a user out of a file opened in Excel Online
If you have multiple people co-authoring in Excel Online, there are times when you need to open the file in Excel - typically for advanced formatting, etc. If someone has accidentally left the file open in their browser, there is no way to force them out and keeps the file locked. Although not always intentional, it can create a major headache by not being able to simply kick/close out that particular user from editing.
Anonymous
shared this idea
Thank you for the feedback! Co-authoring between Web, Windows, and Mac is supported in current versions of Excel.
93 comments
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Colin Campbell
commented
@ Excel Team [MSFT], this request IS NOT "completed"!
It makes me wonder if your account is even run by a human, because the response you've given, "Co-authoring between Web, Windows, and Mac is supported in current versions of Excel." sounds like a bot wrote it. It does not address the request at hand in the slightest.
We're not looking to "co-author", we've already had that functionality for a long time, OBVIOUSLY.
We're looking to be able to kick users out of a file so that we can make changes that are only possible when a single user has the file open.
This isn't hard, and it's not hard to respond to these requests appropriately. We've been asking for this for FIVE YEARS now... what gives?
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Anonymous
commented
escalating this to Satya Nadella to get approval for 1 hour of dev time to make this happen. so easy to code............
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Amy
commented
co-authoring doesn't work like you wish it did. Please fix this already. When I try to edit online when someone has left it open in their browser, it won't let me copy/paste. When I open in desktop and edit I get an irresolvable sync error and the only solution that works is saving a local copy, which defeats the point. This is not a functional collaborative tool.
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Anonymous
commented
Yes, I concur with all other comments in this thread, same issue, someone left connected to the file, and no way to kick them out, which eliminates my ability to edit the file (because no offense, but desktop app has about 1000x the abilities of Excel Online) :(
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Sarah
commented
There are so many things that you cannot do while someone else has a file open, even if there is "co-authoring". A coworker left her computer in sleep mode and is on vacation for a full week. During this week, we can't do many of the things we need to do. There should be an executive admin function to boot people from the file for maintenance.
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Will
commented
I found a way to kick the person out. If you have versioning turned on, find the last version the person updated and delete that version. This worked for me.
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Anonymous
commented
Please make this easy, it is so hatefull you cannot kick somebody out a file they forget to close en decide to go for dinner... please.
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Eugenio
commented
What answer is this? It does not address the problem stated. One of my file, as owner, is locked by a dummy user. How can we kick the dummy user out and start modifying the file again?
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Yuriy Eduardovich Tereshchenko commented
@Kris, I suggest you are doing something wrong. There is option to open file in excel desktop app from teams, from one drive, from sharepoint etc. There is always the button "open in desktop app". And work in the desktop app being online! The only thing is that you need to have excel 365 desktop app installed. Not excel 2016, and preferably not even 2019. Because they support this feature only partly. But since you are using modern cloud-based collaboration tools like Teams, you probably have all the 365 office subscription and this is the app you have. So you can do anything, even move to other folders and rename the file - all the users will still be able to work with your file and you won't need to kick them out. And if for some reason you want still to kick people from file - you can disable their access anytime. The exact way to do this depends on what type of access you gave initially, but it all goes under the settings section "manage access".
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Kris
commented
I have had more headaches and issues using Teams. An admin or owner of a Team should have the ability to kick someone out of a document or at least temporarily lock it down for editing. We're using it for our nurses to indicate what they want their schedule to be because Kronos won't work for our particular situation. I have NO choice but to download a copy to my client Excel since the Teams and online version lack several features that we NEED in order to make this schedule effective. I'm unable to upload with the same name because someone has had this spreadsheet open since Saturday --- it's now Wednesday. I have even had multiple instances where Teams says that I have it open and can't rewrite when I clearly do not. How do I know I don't? Because I've closed and completely rebooted to ensure I didn't have it still open. Co-authoring is a great idea but there are so many things that cause work around and extra work just to make the co-authoring work.
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Anonymous
commented
@Gina Erwin,
Basically this co-authoring feature required Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus which you can download portal.office.com -
Gina Erwin
commented
ADMIN: I'm generally a "tecnotard" and really don't know a whole lot when it comes to computer programs, but I just spent about 20 minutes reading thru 2 years of comments on this issue alone and the question still remains...HAS ANYONE FOUND A WAY TO UNLOCK A FILE THAT SOMEONE ELSE HAS LOCKED FOR EDITING?
Your response dated April 8,2020 that co-authoring between web, windows and mac is supported doesn't really seem to explain to me, anyway, HOW that can be accomplished. Co-authoring would be FANTASTIC!! Simply because, if we do make our updates on the "desktop app," how can we be sure that those changes migrate to the on-line file? Or did we just create a second "editable" file that will NEVER be updated again online? And when you have a team of 45 persons who are supposed to be using the same standardized documents that have now been corrupted and saved who knows how many times over, what the heck do we do now! AND our facility contact sheet is STILL LOCKED UP!!!!
Some instruction on Co-authoring and how to release a locked document or at least direction to a link for the instructions would be most helpful.
I would apologize for the rant, but I work in healthcare and I'm a bit frazzled, as I'm sure most of you are as well. With that said, please be safe and take the precautions seriously. Nothing is more important than our loved ones.
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Anonymous
commented
How is this not already a basic feature baked into onedrive?
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Greg Simonis
commented
@MathewKostak
Very good point Matt. I will stick to the topic at hand.Anyone found a way to UNLOCK a file that someone else has LOCKED FOR EDITING?
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Matthew Kostak
commented
Everyone on this thread - we are almost all aware of O365 capabilities in the desktop and browser. There are many reasons people can get locked out of a file. Upload Center cache corruption, "check out", someone's computer crashing during a file save. Many things can cause a user to lock a file, EVEN YOU can lock out a file unintentionally. What this post is asking is for us to be able to administratively perform a command in SharePoint/OneDrive/Teams, wherever the file is stored, and "unlock" or "kick" that person out of the file. That is the ask, not to just be able to have multiple people edit in different browsers.
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Eddie
commented
@Greg Simonis @Ryan
That's not true if you have Office 365. I used to have the same problem as you Ryan.If you have Office 365, you can edit both online and desktop app at the same time with no interference. I usually have 4-5 ppl using at the same time online and it was hard to communicate with everyone to close the file so I can edit on my desktop. On Office 365, I don't care how many people are online using the file, I can always click "Open in Desktop App" and start editing things that I can't do online. If someone is editing online during that time, I can see it on my desktop app as well. My life is so much easier now :)
I was using Office 2013 Excel before. I can't confirm for other versions but Office 365 is what you are all looking for.
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tlc
commented
Yes, when its Online we expected multi-use realtime stuff............. I am not sure what Microsoft's concerns was when Excel online and Onedrive was developed but I dont really care, I just want it!
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Ryan
commented
@Greg Simonis: That's useful info--thank you. Very, very difficult to communicate those caveats to users, though. If both Excel Online and regular Excel disallow a user to do something unsupported--and provide a clear error message why they cannot--that would be fine. That has not been my experience, though. I've seen where people open up the same file in regular Excel, and suddenly the Excel Online folks are left wondering why it's acting weird. No error message of any kind initially; eventually they get an error message, but it is not a helpful message at all, and certainly doesn't point to the real issue.
In addition to resolving those issues, the ability to kick someone out of a file is still necessary.
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Greg Simonis
commented
Just to be clear on this issue:
- YOU CAN edit an Excel file in either the browser or in Excel, if you are the ONLY one editing the Excel file.
- If two people want to edit the file at the same time, AND one person opens it in Excel, the 2nd person CANNOT edit the file in the browser. * The ONLY way this can be done is by both people editing the file in the browser *
- This IS NOT an issue for a Word file. Two people can edit a Word file at the same time, with one person editing it in the browser AND the other person editing it in Word. -
Anonymous
commented
2+ years on. Please sort this out guys. It's basic.