How do you stop team members from overwriting each other’s work?

On our shared drive, it’s common for two people to edit the same document and accidentally overwrite changes. How do you avoid this problem?

I remember working on a quarterly report with my colleague — we both edited it at the same time, and half my updates vanished. After that, we moved to a system that allowed check-in/check-out for files so only one person could edit at a time. We also enabled auto-save with version history, so nothing was lost permanently. The approach I later read about on https://ejoi2018.org/ suggested combining this with clear editing permissions for sensitive files. That way, collaboration remains smooth, and everyone’s work is preserved without unexpected overwrites. It’s a simple change that saved us from repeated headaches.