Overview
When using Co-Authoring in the Office for Web (so you are working on the document contents in the browser), you may randomly get an error similar to
"Couldn't Save Highlighted Changes"
"Couldn't Save Highlighted Changes. To avoid losing them, open this document in a new tab and copy and paste these changes. If you refresh this tab, you'll lose these changes."
In a yellow bar at the top of the editor (note: this looks like the desktop Word application, because the Word for Web looks similar, but this runs in the browser):
This can also happen after the author ends the coauthoring session and checks in the document, but other users still have it open for editing. The author may not get a warning that other users are still working on the content.
In this scenario, the other users may alternatively get an error popup similar to this:
"Couldn't save the workbook."
This error may appear after unexpectedly long time, even as much as 5 minutes or more, even though generally the saving intervals should be shorter ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/cloud-storage-partner-program/online/scenarios/coauth ).
Details
While you see the vault URL in the browser address bar, this is just an <iframe> that hosts the Office for the Web editor. All editing and communication between the Office Online Server and the client (editor) happens outside of M-Files control and we cannot influence the user experience and errors.
Workaround
While this is not an M-Files issue, we can suggest you consider the following options:
Try to find the problematic content
In some cases that have reached us, it turned out that copying the content to a new file helped. In other cases, removing some of the content also helped. Both of these imply that some specific content is causing an issue with the web editor and removing it might help. This may be a suitable solution if you only get an error on one or a few files.
Consider Native Coauthoring
M-Files offers Native Coauthoring in the native desktop applications. This lets the users avoid the Web editor, and use the familiar, full-featured desktop apps.
Note that:
- There are requirements for this service: Enabling native Co-Authoring
- Once it is enabled in a vault, it can no longer be disabled. So, consider testing in a blank, new vault first.
Discuss the issue with Microsoft
Since both the editor and the server are Microsoft products, they may be able to offer some assistance.
