Summary

Checking out a file in SharePoint reserves it for you alone until you check it back in. This article covers how to check files out and in from the browser and from the desktop apps, how to record a version comment, how to discard a check-out, what changes in a library that requires check-out, and — the part most guides skip — when to reach for co-authoring instead.

In this guide

• 1. Decide Whether Check Out Is the Right Tool
• 2. Check Out a File in the SharePoint Web Interface
• 3. Check Out from the Desktop — Office Apps and File Explorer
• 4. Show the Checked Out To Column So Your Team Can See
• 5. Check In with a Version Comment
• 6. Discard a Check Out You No Longer Want
• 7. Work in a Library That Requires Check Out

Before You Start

• Edit or Contribute permission on the SharePoint document library. Read-only access hides the check-out commands entirely — see Understanding File Sharing and Permissions in Microsoft 365.
• A browser signed in to Microsoft 365, or Word, Excel, or PowerPoint on the desktop.
• No admin rights required for any step in this guide. Turning Require check out on or off for a library needs site owner rights, covered in Step 7.

Instructions

1. Decide Whether Check Out Is the Right Tool

Check out is a deliberate lock. It was the only way to collaborate safely before co-authoring existed, and it is still the right answer in a narrow set of cases.

Situation	Use	Why
Rewriting a document's structure — moving sections, renumbering, reformatting throughout	Check out	Live edits landing mid-restructure collide with yours and produce a mess neither of you can untangle.
Rebuilding formulas or pivot tables across a workbook	Check out	A colleague typing into a cell you are about to reference breaks the calculation silently.
The library is configured with Require check out	Check out	You have no choice — SharePoint will not let you save otherwise.
Working through a document on a flight or a train with no connection	Check out	The lock tells the team the file is spoken for while you are unreachable.
Adding a paragraph, updating a status, filling in your row of a tracker	Co-authoring	Faster, no lock to remember to release, and everyone sees the change immediately.
Two or three people reviewing a document at the same time	Co-authoring	Each person's cursor is visible and edits merge as they type.

1. Read the two right-hand columns and pick the row that matches what you are about to do.
2. Choose co-authoring for anything routine. It is the better default for most everyday editing, and it removes the single biggest failure mode of check out — a file left locked over a weekend. See How to Co-Author Documents in Real Time.
3. Continue to Step 2 if check out is genuinely the right call.

Note: Check out and co-authoring are mutually exclusive. While a file is checked out, nobody else can edit it — including in the browser — so the live cursors and instant updates of co-authoring are switched off for the duration.

2. Check Out a File in the SharePoint Web Interface

The browser is the most reliable route, and the one that works regardless of which app opens the file.

1. Open the document library in your browser. From Teams, open the Files tab in the channel and click Open in SharePoint. From a synced folder, right-click the file in File Explorer, select Show more options on Windows 11, then OneDrive > View online.
2. Select the file by clicking the circle that appears to the left of its name when you point at the row. A tick fills the circle and the toolbar above the list changes to show file commands.
3. Click the three dots at the right-hand end of that toolbar, then select More. On some tenants Check out sits directly on the toolbar and no More submenu is needed.
4. Click Check out. The menu closes.
5. Confirm the lock took hold. A small green arrow badge appears on the bottom-left corner of the file's type icon in the Name column, and the three-dot menu now offers Check in and Discard check out in place of Check out.
6. Open the file and start work. Click the file name to open it in the browser app, or use the three-dot menu and select Open > Open in app for the desktop version.

Verification: Ask a colleague to open the same file. It opens for them in read-only mode with a banner naming you as the person who has it checked out, and their editing commands are unavailable.

3. Check Out from the Desktop — Office Apps and File Explorer

You do not have to go to the browser if the file is already open in front of you.

1. Open the file from the library. In the browser use Open > Open in app, or open it from a synced folder under OneDrive - YourCompany in File Explorer.
2. Click File in the top-left corner of the ribbon. The Backstage view opens full-screen with Info selected in the left sidebar.
3. Click Manage Document in Word, Manage Workbook in Excel, or Manage Presentation in PowerPoint. It sits in the centre of the Info page.
4. Select Check Out from the dropdown. The Backstage view closes and a banner appears across the top of the document reading Checked Out, with the note that others cannot edit it or see your changes until you check it in.
5. Work as normal and save with Ctrl + S. Each save writes to your checked-out copy, not to the version your colleagues see.
6. Check the file back in from the same place — File > Info > Check In — or follow Step 5 in the browser.

Note: The right-click menu in File Explorer has no check-out command. The modern OneDrive sync app does not expose check-out for synced SharePoint libraries, so the two routes that work from your desktop are the Office File menu above, or OneDrive > View online to reach the browser. Anyone telling you to look for it in the right-click menu is remembering the retired Groove sync client.

4. Show the Checked Out To Column So Your Team Can See

A green arrow badge tells you a file is checked out. It does not tell you by whom. One column fixes that permanently for everyone who uses the library.

1. Open the document library in your browser.
2. Point at the column headers across the top of the file list and click Add column at the far right-hand end.
3. Select Show/hide columns at the bottom of the dropdown. A Edit view columns panel opens on the right listing every available column with a tick box.
4. Tick Checked Out To in the list, then click Apply at the bottom of the panel.
5. The new column appears in the list. Checked-out files show a person's name in it; everything else is blank.
6. Sort by that column to see every locked file at once — click the Checked Out To header and select A to Z.

Tip: Save this as a named view so the whole team gets it rather than only you, and so you can build a filtered view showing checked-out files only — see How to Use List Views and Filters in SharePoint.

5. Check In with a Version Comment

Checking in does three things at once: it releases the lock, it publishes your changes to everyone, and it records a note in version history explaining what you did.

1. Select the file in the document library by clicking the circle to the left of its name.
2. Click the three dots in the toolbar, select More, then click Check in. A Check in panel opens on the right-hand side.
3. Choose the version type if the panel offers one. Minor version (draft) keeps the change visible only to people with edit rights; Major version (publish) makes it the current version for everyone. Libraries with only major versions turned on skip this choice.
4. Type a comment in the Comments box. Write what changed, not what the file is — Reordered sections 3-7 and renumbered figures beats Updated document. This is the text your colleagues read six months from now when they are working out which version to trust.
5. Click Check in at the bottom of the panel. The panel closes, the green arrow badge disappears from the file icon, and the Checked Out To column empties.
6. Confirm your comment landed. Select the file, open the three-dot menu, and click Version history. Your version sits at the top of the list with your name, the timestamp, and your comment in the Comments column.

Verification: Open the file in the browser. Your changes appear, the read-only banner is gone for your colleagues, and the file opens for editing normally.

6. Discard a Check Out You No Longer Want

Discarding releases the lock and reverts the file to how it was at the moment of check-out. Use it when you experimented and want none of it.

1. Select the file in the document library.
2. Click the three dots in the toolbar, select More, then click Discard check out.
3. Read the confirmation dialog. It warns that changes made since the file was checked out will be lost.
4. Click Discard to continue, or Cancel to keep working.
5. The green arrow badge disappears and the file reverts to the last checked-in version. The Version history list shows no new entry, because nothing was published.

Note: You can always discard your own check-out. Discarding someone else's needs site owner rights. If the command is greyed out, send your SharePoint site owner this message: "Please discard the check-out on this file" — then give them the file name, the library, and the name shown in the Checked Out To column. If the file is blocking you right now rather than sitting idle, How to Fix "File Locked for Editing by Another User" in Office covers the whole stuck-file problem, including locks that have nothing to do with check-out.

7. Work in a Library That Requires Check Out

Some libraries — contract repositories, policy sets, controlled document sets — are configured so that check out is compulsory. Three things behave differently there.

1. Recognise it. Clicking Edit on a file prompts you to check it out first, and co-authoring is unavailable throughout the library.
2. Expect uploads to arrive checked out. A file you upload stays checked out to you and stays invisible to everyone else until you check it in for the first time. This is the most common surprise in these libraries — a colleague swears they uploaded the file and nobody can find it.
3. Check in every upload immediately. Select the file, open the three-dot menu, choose More > Check in, add a comment such as Initial upload, and click Check in. The file becomes visible to the rest of the team.
4. Check whether the requirement is on. Click the gear icon in the top-right corner of the SharePoint page, select Library settings, then More library settings, then Versioning settings. The last option on that page reads Require documents to be checked out before they can be edited? with Yes and No radio buttons.
5. Change it if you own the site. Select No, click OK at the bottom of the page, and co-authoring becomes available across the library immediately.
6. Ask if you do not own the site. Tell your site owner: "Please turn off Require documents to be checked out in Versioning settings for this library so we can co-author." Give them the library name and the reason.

Tip: Turning the requirement off does not check anything in. Files already checked out stay checked out until someone checks them in or discards them — add the Checked Out To column from Step 4 first and clear the backlog.

Troubleshooting

DANGER

Discard check out permanently destroys every change made since the file was checked out. Nothing goes to a recycle bin and nothing appears in version history, because those edits were never published. Before you discard anything, open the file and confirm it holds nothing you want — or check it in first and restore the earlier version afterwards.

Symptom / Error	Potential Cause	Solution
Check out is missing from the three-dot menu	Read-only permission on the library	Ask the site owner to grant you Edit or Contribute access to the library, naming the library in your request.
Colleagues say your changes are not there	The file is still checked out to you	Check it in (Step 5). Changes stay private until check-in, however many times you save.
A file you uploaded is invisible to everyone else	Library requires check out	Check the file in for the first time to publish it (Step 7).
Discard check out is greyed out	The check-out belongs to someone else	Ask your SharePoint site owner to discard it, giving them the file name, the library, and the Checked Out To value.
Co-authoring stopped working in one library	Require check out was turned on	Confirm the setting in Versioning settings (Step 7) and ask the site owner to set it to No.
No Comments box in the Check in panel	Versioning turned off for the library	Ask the site owner to enable versioning in Versioning settings so comments and version history are recorded.
A file stayed checked out after your PC crashed	The lock survives the session	Open the library in the browser and check the file in or discard it (Steps 5 and 6). Nothing on your PC releases it.

Related Articles

• How to Fix "File Locked for Editing by Another User" in Office
• How to Co-Author Documents in Real Time
• How to Manage Files in SharePoint Document Libraries
• How to Restore a Previous Version of a File in OneDrive
• How to Fix Duplicate Conflict Copies of Files in OneDrive
• How to Use List Views and Filters in SharePoint
• Understanding File Sharing and Permissions in Microsoft 365

Did this solve your problem?