Open a chart without changing modified date

Hi Jorge

Thanks for reaching out on the Lucid community and I am sorry for the issue you have experienced with modified dates. The last modified time and date is updated any time that a user with edit access opens the document.  A new save is created anytime a user with edit access to the document opens the document which is why the last modified date is updated even when no changes are made. I can see how this can be misleading/confusing and have added your case in a report to our development team.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any further questions.

Any update on this? It's very confusing on when docs were last actually updated without having to scroll through and compare versions.

Thanks

The only workaround I found was to use the document status (e.g. completed or approved) to lock the document. It is a bit cumbersome but it does eliminate unwanted new versions and preserves the true last modified time and date.

I hope this helps.

Thanks Jorge

Thanks Micah ... that sounds like a valid workaround although it will require a lot of work on our part to lock / name all our old stuff.

Meanwhile the misleading "Last Modified" dates make a real mess of our ability to distinguish recent from old work!

May I suggest the following changes in code for a future release:

• On opening a document as Editor (only) prompt "Create new version?"
•  If yes proceed per current behaviour ... if no open a readonly view e.g. ignore edit privileges and behave as if it were a reader without edit permissions
• Add a "New Version" button or other control for readonly views where the reader is an editor.  In this case an editor who is in RO mode can override and create the new version without backtracking and reopening

Hey Robert

Thank you for keeping this conversation going and providing feedback for us to consider on this! Your comments reminded me of another possible workaround for this issue in addition to what Jorge and Micah have provided which is making multiple iterations or duplicates of a document. By duplicating you have the ability to rename the document by iteration as well as change the document status to "Draft" or "Pending" and finalized version to be "Complete" as Jorge was suggesting above. The difference here would be your duplicate would have it's own new revision history that would start once the duplicate is made. 

Again thank you all for your input and potential workarounds here. Please continue to voice your concerns and suggestions here in the Lucid Community! Cheers!

Good idea!  I just discovered that my particular account does not allow viewing account history so your new suggestion will be particularly (if clumsily) helpful.

Hey Robert

Glad to hear this could be helpful for you! Yes it is a bit of a "clunky" (for lack of a better term) way of doing it however this could prevent some accidental or unwanted changes. 

Please reach back out if you have any other questions concerns or if you just wanna share your work--we always love to see how our users are utilizing Lucidchart. Cheers!

I don't find this a very helpful answer. If I have a folder of 30 diagrams from a few years ago and I just want to refresh my memory of what's in each of them I don't want to have to duplicate each one before I open it to take a peek at it. I would have to delete all of those duplicates afterward too to avoid cluttering up my account. 

@larry w Thanks for continuing this thread and apologies for the frustration!

Just to make sure we are on the same page I want to clarify that you do not have to make a copy of your document every time that you want to review what's in it. You can absolutely open it up and take a peek without duplicating it then deleting. Phillip's recommendation above for duplicating the document as a whole was to "reset" the Revision History for the document and start fresh there so that the Revision History of the main original document doesn't become cluttered with versions in which no changes were made and someone simply viewed the document. 

However we certainly understand how a more elegant solution or a different behavior for creating new versions as Robert described above would be useful. I've logged your feedback and will pass it along to our development team. Please let me know if you have additional questions!

This functionality is annoying. We have process documents that people go back to for reference and as a department new to Lucid we were not aware of this behavior. The result is a super long list of versions that are not actually new versions.

Here's my work-around.

1. Identify the documents that we want to manage.

2. Change Status to 'Complete.'

    2.a)  If the doc will go through an approval process add that information in a prominent text field where people can easily see it. Change status to 'Approved' when that is true.

Either state will prevent new versions just from opening the document. Chart or Spark. 

- OR -

2. Change permissions for collaborators so that they can only view or comment on a chart or board. 

Take away:  the application assumes that we are actively managing charts and boards not only creating them for ad hoc collaboration. The Status and Collaborator Management functions offer key features for chart and board management.

Have fun!

Hi @kimber m thank you for continuing this thread and sharing your workaround - this is so valuable! 

Can someone explain how the Status Approved/Completed prevent the Modified Date to be updated on opening the chart ?

I'm still quite frustrated by the fact the "ModifedDate" is updated each time I'm opening a chart just for viewing. I don't get how this has not been fixed since the time this has been going on.

I tried changing the Status to Approved/Completed first but when I open such a chart the "ModifiedDate" still get updated... Can someone explain how this workaround is supposed to well work ? I'm getting confused ^^

Thanks in advance

Hi Guillaume Thanks for continuing this thread and we appreciate the feedback. Another option you might want to try is File> Assign Status> Locked Status (Approved). This will ultimately turn it into a view only document with no "Modified Date" updates when being opened. Hope this helps!

Thanks for the reply 

1) I see you are referring to a custom document status might have been helpful to mentioned that. This is not available to me by default but need to be set up by an admin.

"Note: In order to use content locking you must be on an Enterprise account and an admin on your account must have created custom statuses that allow locking." (from this page)

2) Once available does setting the Locked Custom Status from the dashboard will still update the "ModifiedDate" ? The idea is to lock all existing charts so their "ModifiedDate" won't be changed by viewing them. So if the change of status update the last "ModifiedDate" it would not be as useful for this use case.

3) Is there a way to delete a version in the history ? I wanted to delete the versions created by just viewing but could not see the option just naming the version. The idea is to delete the "view" versions to get make to the original last "ModifedDate" in the dashboard view.

Thank in advance

Hi Guillaume sorry for the confusion. After selecting the Locked Custom Status no viewing history is saved. The Revision history is not available for view unless the Locked Custom Status is removed. Unfortunately deleting previous versions is not currently supported in Lucidchart. However we're always looking for ways to improve Lucidchart and your feedback is the best way for us to do that. Would you mind adding your idea to our feature request form? Ideas submitted to this form are passed on to the product development team for their consideration. We'd love to hear about why this feature is important for you and your team.