Content locking helps protect your work when you are editing pages, content items, headless items, or emails. When enabled, the system locks the item you are editing so that no one else can modify it until the lock is released. Only one user can hold the lock on a given item at a time.
The system generally acquires the lock when you begin editing and releases it when you change the workflow step, publish the item, or explicitly release the lock. Other users can view the content of the item, see who is editing the item and for how long, but cannot make changes. If needed, users with the appropriate permission can override the lock.
The content lock is acquired per language variant, i.e., different users can hold the lock for different language variants of the same item. The system locks content automatically when you:
Items cannot be locked when their current status is Published or Unpublished. You need to start editing the item to lock it.
When you hold a content lock on an item, an information bar is displayed on top of the page:
Actions that do not lock content
The actions that do not automatically lock the item include:
When an item is locked by another user, you see a warning banner showing the name of the user holding the lock and the time when the lock was acquired. You can view the item, but you cannot edit it.
Only the user who holds the lock can perform the following actions:
All users can still:
The system releases the lock automatically when you:
You can verify that the lock has been released when the editing bar with the Release lock button is no longer visible on the Content, Page Builder, Email Builder, and URL tabs.
If you need to edit an item locked by another user, contact the user who holds the lock, or reach out to the administrator. However, in some situations, users who locked certain items may become unavailable, while others need to work on them. To resolve such situations, the administrator and users with the Override content lock permission can release locks held by other users. Users with this permission see the Unlock button on items locked by other users:
To unlock an item locked by another user:
Overriding a content lock discards unsaved changes made by the original editor. Subsequent edits can also result in their changes being lost.
The item is now unlocked and other users can edit the item.