Pause sheet sharing without having to re-share

Cliff_West

I could not find a previously submitted request, so apologies if this is a duplicate.

It would be very nice to be able to pause sheet sharing temporarily (aka Check-Out the sheet) so that updates can be made without other users logging into a work-in-progress. I manage several complex schedules and budgets, and constantly get users/clients emailing me in a panic when they open the sheets mid-update.

My only workarounds now are to either deal with the mid-update questions or unshare/reshare when I am done. The latter of the two options is time-consuming when the sheet is shared with dozens of users with varied access levels.

Has this option been considered?

S.Stone

@Cliff_West , while this isn't a workaround per se, are you able to add a helper row or column that provides a big red "sheet updates in progress" warning that lets them know you've got it "checked out" for edits? You could set it up with a simple checkbox so you can manually toggle it on and off. Depending on how much you're color coding things, you could have it change the other cells (font or background) to a different color to help it stand out.

Again, that doesn't solve the issue, but wanted to mention it in case you could enable something like that to help ease your clients/users concerns in a more immediate way (though getting them to read and understand that is a whole other thing).