Any updates / solutions to this?! This is adding a lot of pressure and hours / costs to us.

Please add this feature. We have data loss occurring because of this. Whether it is an autolock feature or even something as simple as a notification/status that someone else is editing the file. A user was just making a large amount of changes, another user subsequently opened the file and started editing and neither had any idea someone else was in the file. This seems like an issue that could be resolved easily with a couple of different solutions.

I am baffled this is not something that has been fixed yet. Whoever on your team did the Box for Office already figured this out. Just apply it to Box Drive already. Auto lock/unlock will take pressure off of this significant problem.

Just migrated to box from a NAS. I agree with the sentiment that the vast majority of files should be auto locked. The number of files needing concurrent editing is a minuscule number compared to the hundreds that cause problems with the copies being created.

Crucial for box to stay competitive. Still having to archaically "right-click" lock file in box drive or you'll end up with conflicting multi user edits. Will migrate very soon, fed up in waiting.

This issue is up there with workflow fails such as Syncing browser created box Bookmarks aka "hyperlinks to box drive folders" . In other words, windows folder/file shortcuts created in box drive folder can't be synced with box.. So no %userprofile% in shortcut or intelligence to permissions is even attempted.

We recently transitioned our office to box, and this has been the biggest complaint so far. We don't use Microsoft office, so the proposed solution isn't going to work for us. We would like to see automatic file locking/unlocking on all file types.

Any update on this? It's been on the roadmap for over a year.

Please, please implement this. We have recently moved to Box and many of our users are disappointed we did given the continual issues we are having with collaborating on documents, they are often losing their work.

We continually suffer hours of rework - today it took one of hour guys 3 hours to merge back in the changes lost in a spreadsheet by 4 people over a week - not to mention the massive embarrassment with the client when we advised them incorrectly...
This is costing money - so for now we have moved this file to OneDrive

Please automatically lock and unlock files when anyone opens or closes. Manually locking and unlocking each and every file is extremely cumbersome and ineffective. We would prefer to be able to turn on a setting to make it automatic to lock every file and then if someone does need to just look at a file without unlocking, they can do that manually. The reality is that 99.9% of the time, we need all files locked when opened.

I would like to share some feedback from the CEO of our company. I received this today. We migrated to Box off a NAS box back at the beginning of March. The employees love the product but lack of the auto-lock feature and the inability to even turn it on has him questioning our long term business relationship.

See below:

Gene,

Overall, I really like Box. With that said, the issue with how you need to manually lock out a file to prevent others from opening and revising at the same time is extremely frustrating. We had our first “lost changes” today on Beverly PCO log. I think it is too much to ask people to manually lock each shared file that they are updating, make changes and then remember to unlock the file.

I know Box said this was going to be changed next version to automatically lock files upon opening them. When will that version be coming out? This issue is more or less a show stopper for us in the long-term. If we cannot get a firm commitment on if and when this change will be implemented, we will have to seriously considering going to a different cloud platform.

Sorry if I am “shooting the messenger” but that is how I feel about this issue right now.

Thank you,
Jon

It speaks for itself and I think it is extremely valid.

Yea..not sure on the reasoning behind the lag. This should have been a day one feature back in 2005, any company moving from a file server expects this functionality and are completely dissapointed it's not available. It's been almost 15 Years!!!! Reeks of failed product management.

Do you know how much time staff has wasted reconciliing differences between files after multiple versions are created? Probably $50,000 in wasted productivity easily. Locking is a failed attempt and a band-aide.

The implementation of this update alone would increase our team's satisfaction with Box tenfold. I know Box implemented the Pulse site to be more transparent about new features and their progress to completion. Please update us on your progress. Our team desperately needs a solution to avoid accidental versioning conflicts that cost multiple work hours to repair. "Behavior change" is not an acceptable solution. Safety precautions as simple as this one are essential to the seamless integration of Box within an established company.

We have to purchase another NAS to accommodate accounting/finance for this reason. Allowing box drive to map to a common location was a leap forward for linked documents. Now finish the job with auto file locking!

This is a vital update - sharing financial information accross a team for updating currently means losing integrity of data and renders box unusable for many requirements.

Box team,

How long are you going to ignore this feature request? I had a video meeting with a box representative that gave me a demo of how this feature would work back in January 2019. He told me this feature would most likely be available by November 2019. I reached out to him again on the status of this feature and I am getting the run around, just go look at box pulse, it will let you know. Well there is still no update for this must have feature.

There needs to be a way to Lock a file automatically when a user opens the file through Box Drive. If another user A attempts to open a file that is already opened by User B, then User A should be told that User B already has this file open and User A should be given the opportunity to "preview" or view the file as "read only".

I can see where this is almost a step backwards from Box's core ideas of collaboration because the web based experience is more forward thinking allowing for simultaneous file access. Box Drive came into play later and the design mimics the Windows File Explorer look and feel but functionality of file access my multiple people is lacking proper notice of other users accessing the files.

It relies on the lock feature which adds another step to end user workflow and leaves room for error when files are locked and if not properly unlocked could cause issues.

I recently implemented Box Drive for a group of about 50 staff members all of which have access to 2 different file shares. In the first few days, they had major issues because they thought that if they opened the file, others couldn’t write to it. Another user would open the file thinking they were the only one accessing the file and then both users save their work creating a new version of the same file. Now there’s 2 versions with 2 sets of data changes.

This has happened on multiple occasions and it’s nice that you don’t lose the data that both
users worked on but to conjoin the data from the 2 files is frustrating and cumbersome.

Box team - Please reach out to me if you wish to do so and i'd gladly discuss this in greater detail. I'm part of a large university that has a university wide deployment of Box.

I want to lock not only box Drive but also box Edit in the same way.

I hope you'll get this feature soon. But it would be happy to have Autocad (.dwg) added to specific applications.

Its crazy that this is not available, as its hard to collaborate if multiple can edit the same file and save different versions. Box should either provide this or enable joint editing like in Google Docs for Office docs.