File Is Being Accessed by Someone Else

When you try to synchronize with the central model (Sync with Central), a message informs you that the "File <file name> is being accessed by someone else and is not available," or the system crashes.

Issue: The most common situation where this error occurs is when you are using file-based worksharing in a mixed Windows environment.

It may be caused by a compatibility issue between Microsoft SMB (Server Message Block) Protocol version 2.1 (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2), and SMB version 3 (Windows 8, Windows Server 2012).

To verify that the issue is caused by the SMB version

  1. Temporarily disable SMBv3 and SMBv2 following these instructions from Microsoft.
  2. Try to Sync with Central again.

If the error does not reoccur, it was caused by the SMB compatibility issue.

If the error does reoccur, it may be caused by another issue:

Solution: To resolve the SMB compatibility issue, try one or more of the following solutions: