Checking in documents from the Office interface is mentioned earlier in this chapter, in the section “Upload a File from an Office Application.”
You can use the method described there, and you can also use the same
process to check out a document: Just open the document using the
Microsoft Office application and select the Check Out option from the
menu. If you choose Edit from the document’s or list item’s drop-down
menu, usually the document or list item automatically checks itself out
for you. However, check-out and check-in are also offered on the web
interface because not all files are Microsoft Office documents, and
sometimes you do not want to open a Microsoft Office application just
to check out a document (for example, just to make sure no one else is
modifying it). When you are finished making changes and want other
people to see your changes, you should check the document back in.
To check out a document,
select the file or list item by using the check box that becomes
available when you hover your mouse’s cursor over the row for that
document or list item. If the check-out mechanism is enabled, the
Documents ribbon or Items ribbon shows the Check Out and Check In
buttons under the Open & Check Out section of the ribbon (see Figure 1).
The
Check Out button might be grayed out if the document or item is already
checked out to another user, and the Check In button is be clickable
only if the document or list item is currently checked out to you.
Tip
The Check Out and Check In
options are also available from the drop-down menu for files and list
items. This is similar to the Edit Properties and Delete actions.
When checking out files (as
opposed to list items), if you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer,
you are asked whether you want to check out the file to a local drafts
folder. (Other browsers may support this option in the future as well.)
If you select OK, a copy of the file is placed in a special folder,
usually called SharePoint Drafts, under the My Documents folder on your
computer. (You can change this location from your Office applications.)
If you do not choose this option, the file is just marked as checked
out to you, but no copy of the file is made. The SharePoint drafts
folder allows you to work on the document on your machine, even when
the machine is not connected to the SharePoint site. When you connect
again, you can go back to the document library to check in the
document; doing this uploads it from the SharePoint drafts folder.
Checking in a file
increases the version number of the file. The amount of increase
depends on the settings for the list or document library. With the
simplest setting, every time you check in a file or list item, its
version is increased by 1. However, settings can change this. The next
section provides more information on how different settings can affect
the check-in process.
