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.

Thank you for your feedback, the feature is under review, please keep voting.
Tamar {MSFT}
72 comments
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Anonymous commented
FIX THIS
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Brian commented
This is horrible, i have 5 people in the document and they're all gone for the evening and I need to perform some advance features. As the owner of the document or administrator of the SharePoint site, I should be able to force people out of the document. VERY frustrating.
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Lance Murphy commented
Hey everyone, please share the link to this with your teams and affected users and encourage them to vote!
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HappyFeet commented
Change the user's editing rights would be my next move. But hmm, what if both users need edit rights. Yes, I agree, this should be fixed because that not only wastes time, but it can be very frustrating to spend time in an Excel sheet, editing, and someone else just sitting with it in the background.
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Javier Negro Dieste commented
I’m afraid at this point this item needs more votes to get noticed by Microsoft...
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Luiz Veneziani commented
Judging from the comments, this issue has been lingering unresolved for a while. This is hampering our agility as well and would like to see this fixed sooner rather than later.
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Tomas Franke commented
Please help with this.
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Anonymous commented
100% agree with comments here. Please resolve. Google Sheets doesn't have this problem. Much better user experience.
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Anonymous commented
For us, what happens is a user gets locked in there multiple times - the same user - when they're trying to actually fix it. This delays the ability for others to modify or save the file (or even that person). We have to wait the timeout.
I can understand why kicking people out of files might be dangerous. Maybe better handling of the situation - a log out or release option for the person currently in the file. Detection of duplicate users w/ a file lock. Just some ideas...
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Anonymous commented
BIG issue for us. We'd really appreciate the document owner/manager to have this.
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Anonymous commented
It thinks I am in three times editing so can't open in on desktop! I've cleared cookies and rebooted.
Microsoft - PLEASE sort out - it's getting very annoying. -
Anonymous commented
Very annoying. MS please work this out since this decrease productivity
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Anonymous commented
100% agree with everyone. Need to do advanced editing and have to wait until everyone is out of the file. Please allow the file owner to kick people out!
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Tyler Haynes commented
Freaking embarrassing MS. The fact that Google Sheets is better for share files is pathetic. From a customer who wants change, please help.
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AV commented
this is killing me right now. Also killing me is the fact that it's been "under review" for a year and a half.
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Andre commented
It's pretty embarrassing a company like Microsoft didn't realize that even after a person logs out it shows them editing for another 30 minutes and there is no way to kick them out to actually do some advanced editing. Nothing but issues with this excel online, you wonder why everyone is switching to google...
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Doyle commented
Frickin' A................. I need to kick someone out right now and it's 1:18am!! They probably fell asleep at their computer or went to sleep without shutting down...
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J. P. commented
This 1000x. I'm dealing with this issue as I type.
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John Elza commented
This is desperately needed. This is a major issue. Why has it taken over 2 years to add this feature with no news of its implementation?
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Frank commented
Would be awesome to toggle co-author on a live document from editing to read only on the fly along the kick out function.