Companies work from Excel, Word and other files on network shared folders. More than one user cannot usually work on these files at the same time. Time is lost tracking down who has the file locked.
It can be hard to see who has a file locked. Sometimes Excel or Word shows who. But not always. Other file like shared PDF's and CAD file types do not help much.
One way to see who locked a file is from the Windows file server as Administrator. Not practical for security reasons.
This tool has two parts:
- A watcher that checks for locked files. The watcher uses a search list for watched files and folders.
- A web server that displays the locked files and who locked them. No need for special access. Just check a web page.
Demo -- https://p7th0n.github.io/check_for_locked_files/
- Clone or download and extract this repo to a folder on the file server.
- Install NodeJS and npm if not installed.
- Open a command prompt at the repo location and run npm install to install http-server.
- Run npm start to start the webserver. By default it runs on port 80 so if that is a problem edit package.json scripts/start.
- Open http://fileserver-name to watch for locked files.
- In a separate command prompt start the watcher - npm run watch [requires Administrator privledges]
- Open wwwroot/assets/data/watchlist.json
- Add, remove or edit items in the watchList array.
- Save changes.
- The watcher reads watchlist.json on each cycle so there's no need to restart the Powershell watcher process.
{
"watchList": [
"README",
"dave",
"checkforlocks"
]
}
- File server watcher - the Powershell process requires administrator privileges on the Windows file server.
- Web server - the NodeJS http-server serves the web page.
- TODO - Microsoft IIS can also host the web page. The setup steps are coming soon.