Good morning Rebecca,

this is a common problem when requiring checkout of files. As long the file has not been checked in you can't do anything from the workflow side.

Technically of course you could check in the file by a workflow running automatically but you will never know why the file has been checked out. Maybe you ruin someones work by checking it in automatically.

However you could try help people think of checking in next time by having a site workflow running once or twice a day, getting all files of your library that have "checked out by" not empty and inform the people that has checked out the document if it still needs the file or if the file should be checked in. Easy way is to let them check in and you're done but you could also check in the file with a workflow if the person responses with yes or doesn't answer in s specific time.

Would that be an option?

Side question: why do you require check out in the first place? Usually it was used so people don't overwrite their changes when working on files the same time but since modern SharePoint Farms support co authoring this feature is used very seldom in the meantime. Maybe this is an option for you too?

Best regards

Enrico

Hi Enrico, thanks for your help! Yes I thought of the workaround you suggested as well, so I might look at putting that in. I would love to use the co-authoring feature but apparently this doesn't work well for excel files. Oh well!

thanks again,

Rebecca