newbie

[jlavery1987]

im working on a food menu with InDesign and all of a sudden i cant edit anything because i am now getting an error message saying that i have someone else using it. i dont know what to do please help.

[Randy Hagan]

My suspicion is that you have an errant InDesign Lock file (.idlk) lurking either on your system or in some cloud drive (Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, iCloud, etc.) that is gumming up the works.

Getting past your problem is relatively easy, if you're the only one working with InDesign:

1. Shut down InDesign on your computer(s).
2. Do a search for *.idlk files on your system, and on the cloud drives you use.
3. Kill them all. Delete them. In every location where you work on InDesign files.
4. Restart InDesign, then open your file.

This will fix your problem.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[LauraMäkelä]

Hi!

I have the same problem with Mac Catalina. I am saving all my files to Onedrive as it is our company policy. I did not have the problem before but this week all the Adobe programs are giving the same error message: " File is in use...etc"

I tried your ".idlk" trick, but found none on my computer or onedrive. 

The files are not shared, so they are not actually in use. 

Do you know what I could try? 

Thanks a million in advance!

BR

Laura

[Randy Hagan]

I'm assuming that you're working on a Windows-based network, since you told me company policy is to work from OneDrive.

This offers one more possibility that could cause a problem:

1. Don't open the file from Finder. Make sure all Finder windows on your system are closed, especially if one has your problem file selected in it.
2. Open InDesign. Navigate to the file location using InDesign's File>Open... menu command. See if it opens from there.

Windows has a unique quirk when you try to open files from the File Explorer window, especially if you have the utility's Preview pane showing. Even though InDesign generally doesn't show a preview of the document in that pane, as far as your computer is concerned, that file is now "in use" by Windows and cannot be opened. SMB network connections effectively lie to the network and tell it that you are working with a Windows system. And since Mac Finder windows are set to automatically show either a preview of the file or the file association icon in the default Column view, you bump up against the same issue with a Mac. Don't feel bad, this happens more often than you think.

If you can open the file from InDesign directly when all Finder windows are closed, you are encountering that issue. The fix, and it kinda stinks because it kills a useful Finder feature, is to change to the List view. It reduces the usefulness of Finder, but it lets you put the murder on the preview/icon window and eliminate the issue.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[BobLevine]

Onedrive is fully crossplatform, Randy. Anyone with an Office 365 subscription gets one terrabyte of storage.

[BobLevine]

Whoops hit send too soon on that one.

Like Dropbox, Onedrive has a "smart sync" feature which allows the user to see the file but keeps in the cloud only until the user tries to open it.

That feature seems to be a bit more troublesome on the Mac than Windows but my advice to all InDesign users is to turn it off completely.

[LauraMäkelä]

Hi Randy! 

Thanks for your detailed instructions, and you quessed right, our company is indeed working on MS 365 platform. I did all you recommended but the problem stays, and encountered even a new one, my onedrive documents can not be saved to my computer as "I do not have rights" and those are files I have made 😄 .

So, it seems like the problem is not Adobe but Onedrive, so will have to turn to Microsoft help center instead.  

Have a nice weekend and thanks again for your prompt help!

Laura

[Randy Hagan]

Bob's tip for changing your sync settings may help you. Working with cloud files has its own challenges. I'd try his advice to cut off sync in the application and see if that helped.

You might try finding the file location on the cloud drive and drag a copy to your desktop and see if that helps. I've had good luck with that. If it does open, you're in good shape and it'll tell us a lot about the problem. You just need to remember to copy the file back up to its OneDrive location when you're done with the job. There are network/company things that can be done once we know the results of your test, but often the easiest way is to work from a copy of the file on your system rather through the pipeline of a wired/wireless network location.

Good luck, and I hope you have a great weekend.

Randy