Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

546 Part VII: Information Management in SharePoint Products and Technologies
known as an implicit check-out, but if you have not previously explicitly checked
out the document, your user name will not be placed in the checked-out column on
the website. When you close the file in Microsoft Word 2003, it releases the shortterm
lock and the document is then available for other users to edit.
When you save the document back to the document library (assuming you
have the permissions to do so) and you’re using a Microsoft Office 2003 application,
the Web Files Properties box will be displayed with the same fields as on the Document
Library: Upload Document page. Once the document is saved, the explicit
Check Out and Check In options will be available from the drop-down File menu or
on the Shared Workspace pane, as illustrated in Figure 19-13, but you can continue
editing the document and saving it without checking the document in or out. Applications
that are compatible with Windows SharePoint Services will use short-term
file locking when opening a document stored in a document library.
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Figure 19-13 Microsoft Word 2003 File menu and Shared Workspace pane
Check in and Check out states are not dependent on the Save, Save As, Copy,
or Move action. If versioning is enabled, the version number increments as
described in the previous section whether the document is checked out or checked
in. Nor are Check In and Check Out dependent on versioning being enabled. You
should check out a document if you want to edit it; this will prevent a second user
from opening the same document, making changes to that document, and then finding
(because whoever opened it first has a short-term lock on the file) that she is
unable to save her changes to the document. Because the second person has no visible
evidence when she views the document library that anyone else is accessing the
file, she might think there is a problem with the website.