When colleagues have made comments on a file and someone has decided which of those suggestions to adopt, you'll need to edit the original file. You do this using an appropriate program on your computer. Therefore, you'll need a copy of the file.

Importantly, though,

 

edit

additionally makes a note that you've asked to do this so that other people can be warned that you are in the middle of making changes, and you can get to hear about it if someone else tries to edit at the same time.

There's three or four ways to use

 

edit

:

• download a copy and use
   

  supersede
  later to replace the older version with the new one
• download and open a copy, and then save it to a special 'hot folder' where it the newly saved copy will automatically supersede the old version
• for formatted text, 'edit here' notes that you are editing and then opens the built-in editor
• if you are the orignal author, you may already have a copy from when you first uploaded it. If you just click 'Make a note' you will not collect a copy of the file, but will be helping colleagues by telling them you're in the middle of making changes

If your window says you are looking at the newset version, but we are telling you otherwise, it could be that someone has superseded the file with a new version but your screen has not been refreshed since. We check evvery so often if someone is changing the file under your feet, but we can't check continuously (or you may have said you didn't want to know).

If someone else has already said they are editing the file, we'll tell you this. If you proceed to edit also, we'll send your colleague an email to let them know. This is important because you can spend time making changes only to find that someone else has replaced the version you were working on with theirs.

You'll get to know this has happened when you try to supersede, so you can then get a copy of their version and incorporate their changes in your copy or vice-versa. Having doen this, tt would then be safe to ignore the warning gives you. But if you ignore the warning without merging changes, you will be ignoring the other peron's changes. They won't have vanished, of course - their older version will still be there underneath, but the changes it represents won't then make it into the finished document without some further alterations. You can ignore all the warnings, but you may not be popular!