Chapter 47 · Working With Others
Revoking Access
A share ends with one button. Revoking a link takes the document away from the person who held it, at once and without telling them, and leaves everything they already wrote in your draft. This chapter covers what a revoke does, what it leaves behind, and the few things no button can take back.
Revoking a link
Only the document's owner can revoke, and only from the document itself.
- Open the document and click Share ▾ in the editor toolbar.
- Find the row for the link. Each row reads the role, then either the address of the account that claimed it or the word unclaimed, with the URL underneath.
- Click Revoke on that row.
- Confirm the dialog: Revoke this link? The collaborator loses access immediately.
The row leaves the list. There is no undo and no archive of revoked links: the token is deleted, so the same URL can never work again. If you revoked the wrong row, mint a new link and send it.
There is no revoke everyone button. A document shared with four people has four rows, and ending all four shares means four clicks.
Revoking an unclaimed link is the fix for a link sent to the wrong address or pasted somewhere public. Nobody has used it yet, and once it is revoked, nobody can. If several unclaimed links sit on one document and you cannot tell which went where, revoke them all and mint fresh ones: an unclaimed row carries no name to tell them apart.
What happens the moment you confirm
Every request a collaborator makes is checked against their share, so there is no session to wait out. The next request after the revoke fails.
| Where they are | What they see |
|---|---|
| Typing in the open document | The status beside the title changes from Saved to Save failed, retrying. After a second failed attempt the save alarm reads Not saving (server said 404). Your last 2 attempts failed, and your work is safe on this device but has not reached the server. |
| Reloading the document | The page answers as though the document does not exist. |
| Their Studio page | The row is gone from Shared with you. |
| Opening the old invite link | This invite link is no longer valid |
The editor keeps retrying the save, waiting longer each time up to once a minute, and the Try now button in the alarm gets the same answer. Anything they typed after the revoke never reaches you. It stays in their browser's storage on their own device, where Storskarvia will not offer it back, because the document it belonged to no longer opens for them. A comment or reply they try to post after the revoke is refused the same way.
Storskarvia sends no email and shows no notice. If the person should hear why, tell them yourself.
What stays in your draft
Revoking removes a person's access. It does not touch a word of the document.
- Suggestions a reviewer made stay as tracked changes. Accept or reject them as usual (Chapter 44).
- Edits an editor made are ordinary text now, indistinguishable from yours. The next section covers taking them back out.
- Comments and replies stay under the name they were written with. The author can no longer change them, because changing a comment needs access to the document. You still can: edit, resolve, or delete any of them from the Comments tab (Chapter 45).
- Your cloud copy. A collaborator's saves were pushed to your Dropbox or Google Drive through your own connection, like yours are. The file there already holds their work, and revoking does not rewrite it.
What a revoke cannot reach
A revoke stops what happens next. It cannot recall what already left.
- Every export. Both roles can export, so a reviewer or editor may have a PDF, a Word file, or a plain-text copy on their own computer.
- Anything printed, copied to the clipboard, or pasted elsewhere.
- The copy of the document their browser kept for crash recovery.
Storskarvia cannot reach into another person's computer, and it will not pretend to. The decision that protects a manuscript is made before sharing: which document, which role, and which person.
Undoing an editor's work
To take the draft back to where it stood before a collaborator's session, open Versions ▾ and restore a version from before they started. Storskarvia takes an automatic checkpoint at most every ten minutes while the document is saved by you or by an editor, so there is usually one close to the moment you want. Chapter 7 covers reading the list and what restoring does.
Two cautions. Restoring replaces the whole document, including anything you wrote after the editor's session. Storskarvia saves what was there first as a version called pre-restore backup, so nothing is lost, but your later work has to be copied back across from it. And a document set to zero retention keeps no versions on the server, so there is nothing to restore from: Chapter 3 explains that setting.
For a reviewer there is nothing to undo in this way. Their suggestions change nothing until you accept them, so rejecting them is the whole job.
Inviting the same person back
A revoked link stays dead. To bring someone back, mint a new link from Share ▾ in whichever role you now want, and send it. Minting a new link is also the only way to change a person's role: revoke the editor link, then send a reviewer link.
If they claim the new link with the same account they used before, the comments they wrote last time become theirs to edit again, because a comment is tied to the account that wrote it. A different account gets a clean start and cannot touch the old ones.
Other ways a share ends
| Event | What happens to the share |
|---|---|
| You delete the document | Every link on it goes, and so does every comment. A collaborator's next request gets the same answer as a revoke. |
| You delete the project | The same, for every document in it. |
| The collaborator closes their account | Their link leaves your Share list. Their comments stay under the name they were written with, and only you can change them. |
What the other side of a revoke looks like to the collaborator is in Chapter 46.
When it goes wrong
| What you see | What it means and what to do |
|---|---|
| That link was not revoked in the status area | The revoke failed and the person still has access. Reload the page, open Share ▾, and revoke again. |
| The row came back after a reload | The revoke never reached the server. Revoke it again and wait for the row to leave the list. |
| No Share ▾ button | You are not the owner. Collaborators cannot revoke anyone, including themselves. |
| Two rows with the same address | You sent that person two links and they claimed both. Revoke both to end their access; one left behind still lets them in. |
| The wrong person was revoked | Mint a new link in the right role and send it. The old one cannot be restored. |
Getting the finished draft out of Storskarvia yourself, as a PDF, a Word file, or a script, is Part VIII.
Updated 2026-09-23 · Full contents · Something wrong or missing?