Lock and unlock pages or elements

Locking an element or page in your design prevents it from being moved, resized, or edited. This helps you avoid making unintentional changes while you edit other parts of your design.

Lock options:

Lock: Completely locks position, style, and content
Lock position only: Locks position and style, leaving only the content editable

What you can lock: You can apply locks to individual elements like text boxes, images, and graphics, or to entire pages. Locking a page affects all elements and the background on that page.

Locking elements or pages aren’t available in Canva Docs.

Locking behaviour for education users

For users in education brands with these feature bundles:

CEDU
CEDD
CEDS
CEMS

Locking works differently. When a teacher (brand admin or brand designer) locks an element, students (brand members) can’t unlock it — even if they have edit access. This applies to designs that are:

Shared directly with students
Used in Live Learning Sessions
Shared as assignments via link, Canva, or an external LMS

Locking works the same way for all other users and brands.

If you’re a student and can’t unlock an element, this is expected. Contact your teacher if you need changes.

Lock and unlock elements

You can't unlock elements when the page is locked. Unlock the page first to make changes.

Select the element you want to lock. You can also hold Shift on your keyboard and click on multiple elements to select them.
Select
Lock.
To unlock, click the locked element and select the
Unlock or
Unlock position icon from the floating toolbar.

Lock and unlock pages

Select the page thumbnail you want to lock.
On the page thumbnail, select the
More icon.
Select
Lock page, and select
Lock.
To unlock a page, select the locked page and select the
unlock or use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+L.

If you still can’t edit the page after unlocking the page, select the

unlock or

unlock position icon from the floating toolbar and toggle until all elements are successfully unlocked.

I can't select an element, all I can see is a lock icon.

If you're a student in an Education brand, the element may have been “locked by teacher”. Students cannot unlock teacher-locked elements. You may see the following message when hovering over the lock:

“Lock cannot be edited.”

If you believe the element was locked by mistake, contact your teacher to request changes.

For non-Education users:

Select the lock icon and toggle the options until successfully unlocked.

Who can lock or unlock elements?

Anyone with edit access to the design can lock or unlock its elements. To change your design’s settings, see Changing or removing share permissions.

Exception for Education brands:

If a teacher locks an element in an Education brand (CEDU, CEDD, CEDS, CEMS), students cannot unlock that element.

What type of lock should I use?

The right lock depends on what users should be able to edit.

For example, if a template only needs text and an image updated, apply a position lock to the text box and frame so the content stays editable. Then apply a full lock to everything else to prevent changes to the layout.

Using the right combination of locks when building Brand Templates helps you create strong, reusable designs with the right level of control.

To learn more, see Apply locks to Brand Templates.

Lock Type	What it does	When to use it	Example scenario
	Locks position, style, and content.	When nothing should change.	Protecting brand logos, background images, or decorative elements in a Brand Template.
	Locks position and style, but allows content editing.	When users need to update text or images, but shouldn't move or resize elements.	Event flyers where users update event details but can't change the layout, or social media templates where users swap photos in frames.
No lock	Elements can be moved, resized, styled, and edited.	When users have full creative control.	Open design areas or completely customisable templates.

Was this helpful?

Helpful

Unhelpful

Help