Locking the canvas

Lock it down.

If you want to prevent anyone from making edits to your canvas, you can lock it. This is different from locking specific objects in the canvas. Locking the canvas disables real-time collaboration and limits interaction to viewing, adding comments, and editing control cells.

Why lock a canvas?

You may decide to lock a canvas for a few reasons:

  • Many people will be viewing the canvas and you don't want anyone accidentally (or intentionally) changing anything.

  • The canvas contains control cells that many people will be editing at the same time.

Locking the canvas does not affect how your queries are run - only caching can affect that.

How to lock a canvas

In the canvas menu you'll see the option to Lock canvas:

When a canvas is locked, the differences in behaviour are:

  • Most objects cannot be interacted with, except for commenting and editing control cells.

  • Changes to control cells are not saved, and are only visible to you.

  • The canvas control bar shows more limited options related to navigation and commenting.

  • Cursors from other concurrent viewers of the canvas are not displayed.

How to unlock a canvas

Once a canvas is locked, it can be unlocked by clicking the icon in the navigation bar. The same menu item can also be used in the canvas menu as above.

Last updated