You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Status:
Closed
Can we have an option to lock files we're working on to avoid conflicted copies?
My business partner and I (often working from different locations) are constantly working on the same documents and trying to save our work at the same time. Result: lots of conflicted copies of file...
Currently Dropbox has a file locking feature, which works great, however we need one that we can turn on to automatically lock a file for editing if you are the first person to open it or the first one to make changes.
A problem right now is someone in the group will lock a file, so they can edit it and nobody will create a conflicting copy, but then forget to unlock it. This is definitely a problem when you have to try to get ahold of someone either via phone or email, and wait for them to unlock it. Especially if they have already left the office for the day or even worse the weekend/vacation.
The lock feature just needs to activate for a file when you open it, and deactivate for a file when you close it. Everything else about the manual locking system currently in place works just as it should.
Here is an idea about improving the Dropbox locking feature, by automatic locking and unlocking a file when it is opened by any shared user. This would help solve the creation of conflicted files when two or more users are sharing the same file and both are trying to update it, edit and save it.