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How to Troubleshoot Edit Mode Access

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If you try to open a document in edit mode and get blocked — a pop-up error message or page, or you're dropped into view-only mode instead — this article walks you through the most common causes and exactly how to resolve each one. By the end, you'll have identified which cause applies to you and have your edit access restored. Work through the scenarios below in order; most edit-access problems come down to one of six things: an expired trial, a license that isn't active or assigned to you, logging in the wrong way, running out of edit hours, not being in the right user group, or needing an additional license altogether.

Scenarios covered:

Buy a license after your free trial expires

A free trial gives you 10 hours of editing or 14 days of Professional access, whichever comes first. Once it expires, your account converts to the free version, and documents that were Professional during your trial become Free documents — which you can no longer open in Edit mode.

  1. Confirm this is the cause: if you were on a trial and it's been more than 14 days, or you've used more than 10 hours of editing, this is almost certainly it.
  2. To keep editing, purchase a Professional license — see Buy a Displayr License for the available options.

Fix a license that isn't giving you access

"The requested action cannot be completed because you do not have any editing hours left on your assigned license. You can still view the document or go to the licenses page to manage your licenses."

Displayr shows this same message whether the underlying cause is that you have no license assigned at all, or your assigned license has no Edit hours left — so seeing it doesn't by itself tell you which of the two applies. Work through the checklist below to find out.

If you know you have a paid license and still can't edit, work through this checklist. Each item links to the scenario below with the full fix:

If the license itself isn't active or assigned to you, an account Administrator needs to assign or reassign it:

  1. Go to Account Settings > Licenses > Professional user.
  2. Find the license and click Assign (or Unassign first, if it's currently assigned to someone else).
  3. Select your name from the list and click OK.

Full steps: How to Reassign a License to a New User. If you're not an Administrator on the account, you'll need to ask whoever is to do this for you.

Switch your login method (single sign-on vs. email and password)

If your account has single sign-on (SSO) enabled, a license is assigned to a specific login method — either your single sign-on identity or your email-and-password credentials, but not both. If you normally use single sign-on but happen to log in with email and password (or vice versa), Displayr sees you as a different user with no license assigned, even though you technically have one. To regain access: 

  1. Log out of Displayr completely.
  2. Log back in using the other method to how you normally sign in — if you usually use email and password, try your company's single sign-on login (typically your company's Displayr subdomain, e.g. yourcompany.displayr.com); if you usually use single sign-on, try logging in directly with email and password instead.
  3. If the alternate login gives you edit access, ask your account Administrator to confirm which login method your license should be assigned to going forward, so you don't hit this again.

See How to Enable Single Sign-On in Displayr for background on how single sign-on is set up on an account.

Add more edit hours to your license

Each Professional license includes 1,000 hours of edit time over a 12-month period (around 20 hours a week). Once a license's hours run out, that user can no longer edit until either the license renews or someone purchases more hours.

  1. Go to Account Settings > Licenses and check the hours remaining against your license. See How to Track Your Displayr Usage for where this is shown.
  2. If your license shows zero hours remaining, confirm whether every license on the account is also at zero hours — if another license on the account still has hours, an Administrator may be able to reassign one of those to you instead (see the checklist above).
  3. If all licenses on the account are at zero hours, you can buy more edit hours directly — look for the self-serve purchase option on the Licenses page, or see Get an additional license.

Get added to a user group with edit access

If you have no access to the document at all (not even to view it), the document won't open — instead you'll land on a separate error page:

Oops, something's not right

"You are not authorised to access this document because your account (your-email@example.com) is not a member of a group with read access."

Go back

In Displayr, user groups control access to a specific document — both viewing and editing — separately from whether you have a license. It's possible to have an active, assigned license with edit hours remaining, and still see this page because you aren't in any group that's been given access to this particular document. (If you have view access but not edit access, you'll instead be able to open the document normally in view-only mode, rather than hitting this page.)

  1. Ask whoever manages your Displayr account — often whoever invited you, or your organization's Displayr Administrator — to add you to a user group with edit access to this document.
  2. If you don't know who that is, check whether you can see a Users section under Account Settings; if not, contact support@displayr.com and Displayr Support can help identify your account's Administrator.

For background on how this is configured, see How to Control Who Can Edit Documents in Displayr and How to Manage User Groups and Permissions in Displayr.

Get an additional license

If none of the above applies and there simply isn't a spare license available for you, your account needs an additional one.

  1. If you're an account Administrator, go to Account Settings > Licenses > Professional user and click Add.
  2. If you're not an Administrator, ask whoever manages your account to do this, or contact Displayr directly — see Buy a Displayr License for all the options.

Contact Support

While you can purchase a license yourself directly, if your organization has an Enterprise agreement, please contact support@displayr.com or reach out to your account manager.

Next

How to Access Your Account Settings

How to Reassign a License to a New User

How to Manage User Groups and Permissions in Displayr

How to Track Your Displayr Usage