Joomla! Documentation™

At any given time you may see a padlock next to a specific item in Joomla!'s administrative backend. These padlocks may be displayed next to any of the following (Content Items, Menu Items, Modules, etc).

The Joomla! system places these padlocks next to an item to indicate that a user is currently editing (or checked out) the item. The lock is removed by the system administratorvwhen the user clicks on the "Save" button for that item. If the user never clicks "Save" and instead hits the "Back" button or navigates to another page, then the item stays locked. If another user needs to work with the item he or she must have the item checked back in before they can work on it.

There are two ways of checking items back in. One way is to contact the person that has the item checked out to see if they are done with the item.

The other option utilises the administrative back end; Click on "System => Global check in" This option should be used very carefully, especially in multi-user environments. This single action checks in all previously checked out items, whether they were checked out by you or not. Possible undesirable side effects may be that multiple editors end up working on the same document. In this case whoever clicks the save button last has their version saved as the final copy.