Visio Opens Document in Browser with Error “Already Open for Editing” when Attempting to Save

Question

A user was attempting to edit a SharePoint Standard 2010 hosted Visio file that had been uploaded to a document set. The document would automatically open via Visio's IE plugin. The user could then modify the file and attempt to save it but would receive the error:

The document is already open for editing by someone else.

As if the document had been checked out. But I had just edited and saved the document on my own system no more than 10 seconds before where it had opened inside the full Visio application, not the browser-hosted, plugin version. Just to be clear, this is not Visio Services related.

Answer 1

This issue was caused by the user launching Internet Explorer x64. Initially I was unable to figure out why the Visio document was being opened inside the browser. When I selected the document actions menu and selected "Edit in Microsoft Visio" I received an error

"'Edit Document' Requires a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible application and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher"

This immediately made me suspicious that the user had launched the x64 version of Internet Explorer. I closed IE and launched the 32 bit version and the document launched in the full Visio application and the user was able to edit and save changes as expected.