How to remove locks on topics?

[Erik Lange]

Whilst Help & Manual was active, the server containing the opened project was renamed, all files from that server were copied to a new server and the new server received the old name. Now I find that a lot of topics and chapter pages in the my project are marked "Topic is read-only! File ... is locked by another user". Restarting Help & Manual doesn't change this. How can I remove the locks for all these topics (preferably all at once)? Thanks in advance for your reply.

[Erik Lange]

It turned out the issue was caused by how the new server was set up: all my files had become read-only. The issue has been fixed now, so this thread can be closed.

[Tim Green]

Hi Erik,

Thanks for updating. Just an FYI: Help & Manual does not set projects or topics to read-only itself. Even in multi-user editing, when a topic in a project is edited by another user it is still not read-only, but in "exclusive" mode that disappears automatically as soon as the user editing it and moves on. At no time is the file actually set to read-only by Help & Manual itself.

These are the possible reasons for projects or topics displaying that they are in read-only mode:

1) Your Windows account does not have write permissions for the folder in question. The folder or drive in which the project is stored is set to read-only, or its permissions have this effect for your user account or user group, and this is being automatically applied to your project. Your project is stored on a network drive and you are experiencing network problems that are causing the files there to be accessed in read-only mode.

2) The project is stored in compressed .hmxz format and is already open somewhere else.

3) The project or topic file has actually been set to read only on the disk, externally to Help & Manual.

4) The project is a child project within a master project and child projects are set to be displayed read-only. If the master project with the child project is open, the child project will also be read-only when you try to open it on its own at the same time.

5) The project is a manual copy of a project that was stored in the Visual Source Safe version control system and is set to read-only because it is no longer in the VCS.

6) Your project is a working copy of a project stored in SubVersion or Team Foundation Server version control that you are trying to edit on an external drive or network drive. Working copies of SVN and TFS managed projects can ONLY be edited if they are stored on a local drive on your own computer. This restriction prevents serious errors and performance problems.

7) You are trying to edit an uncompressed HMXP project in a DropBox managed cloud folder. This is not permitted because DropBox's file management would make a mess of your project, with multiple "conflicted copies" of the same topic and other files in your project. This also applies for all managed cloud folders, including especially OneDrive, which can cause silent overwrites and deletion of project data. However, currently Help+Manual can only identify DropBox actively.