Help! I’m the first designer in the company for 2 years and the Figma files are all over the shop. I’m logged in as the finance woman, and have created my own work email. But how do I get access to the work files with my new Figma email?
Also, and more importantly, all the files are now ‘locked’. They were editable on Friday. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Question
Needing help managing Figma for the company
It looks like someone who is the owner/admin of your Figma project locked those files or, which looks more reasonable, are locked for you because you have a fresh account without any given access.
You need to log with that admin account and give yourself a proper permission for each file, i.e. “can edit”.
Do it here (right mouse button click on the project file in Figma), click “Share”
and then click the “Anyone” row. And click the “Edit” option
If you have struggles with finding out what the correct email/account is, I’d ask someone who runs finances as most likely such an account is associated with an official corporate email. But even this might not be enough as each file can have a different owner and owners can share/restrict file access.
Hey Paul, Celine from the Figma Community Support here, happy to help!
- For accessing the files with your new account: The easiest way is to have someone with admin access (or from the finance account you were using) invite your new work email to the team with the right permissions. Once added, you should be able to access the files from your new account.
- Since you mentioned the files are "all over the shop", it's worth knowing that in Figma, files can be owned by different people and stored in different places (some in a shared team, others in someone's personal drafts). Files in personal drafts are only accessible to their owner, so there's no one-click way to share everything at once. That's why I'd recommend consolidating everything into one team if possible, using your work email as the main owner and transferring key files/projects there. Here’s our guide on how to move a file.
- About the files being “locked”: As Tomasz5 explained, this usually comes down to permissions. Files can appear locked if your role is set to Can view instead of Can edit.
A few things to check:
- Ask whoever manages the account to confirm you have Can edit access on the files or team
- Check if the plan changed recently (e.g. moving to the free Starter plan can limit editing)
In this article, you can learn how to remove or adjust people's access to individual files or projects.
If you’re still stuck, I’d recommend reaching out to the support team via the Support Hub (type “Report a bug” → “Start a chat”).
Sharing links to the affected team, projects, or files, plus any error message you see, will help them investigate faster. Thank you!
Thanks for the help. The company used to pay for Figma, but now on a free starter plan, so I presume that’s why they’re locked? We have more than 3 files, so I can’t access them unless I move them into the drafts area? That’s not great. I presume we’ll have to pay for Figma to get full access?
Yes that’s right, thank you for the additional details. This explains why your files are locked.
On the Starter (free) plan in Figma, there are a couple of key limits:
- File limit: up to 3 total Figma Design and Figma Sites files in a project, AND 3 files per each other Figma product in a project (i.e., 3 Figma Slides files, 3 FigJam files, etc.)
Once that limit is exceeded, Figma will prevent you from being able to edit your files. To keep editing those files, move them to another team or to your team drafts. Learn more about moving files. - Project limit: Only one project per team, it can become locked until files are reorganized under that limit. Learn more about moving projects.
What you can do:
- Move files to Drafts: Files in Drafts aren’t subject to the same team limits, so you’ll be able to edit them, but they’re personal (not shared with the team).
- Move files to another team: Useful if you want to keep collaboration
- Stay within limits: Reduce to 3 files per project (archive/delete if needed)
- Upgrade the plan: Moving back to a paid plan will restore full editing access across files
So, yes this is expected on the Starter plan once limits are exceeded. To regain full editing access across all team files, you’ll need to upgrade. Otherwise, you’ll need to reorganize your files to stay within the Starter plan limits.
For more details, you can check our Help Center article on downgrading or upgrading a plan here. Hope this clarifies!
Thanks Celine. We’ve upgraded the plan, so it should all be fine now. Thanks for the help.
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