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I finally solved the "sharepoint is locked for shared use by (...)" error when updating a sharepoint file

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Posted on by Fer_Santello

Been getting this error for AGES now, and never managed to solve it. Once i stumbled upon it once again, and after hours os trying to solve it, I finally did it.

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Fer_Santello 21 on at

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This error happens when THE FILE YOU'RE TRYING TO UPDATE HAS USERS THAT CAN'T VIEW THE FILE, in other words, users that can't access the specific file. That's why some people get this error and other people don't and it appears to be random.

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jleystral 97 on at

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But what was your solution? Did you just give all users reading permissions?

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jswhite 10 on at

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would also love to know what your solution was

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gg8 9 on at

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I had this issue this morning. I had an excel spreadsheet that I edited and needed to re-upload but the system said "error: the file is locked for shared use by (my email)." What worked to fix it was to open excel and find the item I edited from the recent list (it showed the pathway like "SharePoint page > reviews library"). I then opened this document. Then I went to the file tab > select close. Then when I went back to the library, it let me reupload and change the properties -- the error was gone.

I hope this helps!

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maxpower45255 223 on at

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@Fer_Santello Do you like to torture the poor developer community who's already under enough stress? 🙂 Can you describe the fix clearly? Your comment describes the "What" of the problem but not the "HOW" to fix it.

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maxpower45255 223 on at

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The fix that seems to have worked for me is adding a delay between the time I opened a file on a file share and the time I dropped it/created the file in Sharepoint. Also, I didn't notice this issue with small size files. However, when the file seems large enough, the 'sharing' exception occurs.
There is no "Delay" or "Sleep" action in cloud flows (yet). Instead, you can achieve the same thing by adding a "Do Until" operation and increment a counter variable within the loop. Doing addition up to 200 seems to take about 20seconds. So that was good enough for me. Your mileage may vary.
Here's a another helpful article that gave me the hint.
SharePoint 2019 - 'Document Locked for Shared Use by [Me]' - Microsoft Q&A

Hopefully MSFT puts a fix to this odd behavior.
Good luck.

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jgonzo220 5 on at

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Thank you for this! I had the same error today and your solution worked perfectly.

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gg8 9 on at

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Happy it helped!! 🙂

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AndreC42 2 on at

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This solution worked for me:

How to clear annoying Excel file locks in Power Automate – CleverWorkarounds

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MA777 4 on at

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Thank you! Your solution worked like a charm. You saved the day and my sanity! Sharepoint drives me nuts.

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