To work with any version of a contract document associated with a contract record in Conga CLM on Conga Platform, you must open it directly in X-Author for Contracts Advanced. There are two common ways for you to open a document, depending on how you are accessing the document itself. You can open your DOC or DOCX contract document using one of the following methods:

  • Search and open the document in X-Author for Contracts Advanced.
  • Download the document from Conga CLM on Conga Platform and open it using X-Author for Contracts Advanced.

After opening a document, only one user can work on the document at a time.

If you are using the X-Author for Contracts Advanced add-in on MacBook Air, you might see an error message related to “Add-in memory usage” when you work with a document of size 2 MB or more. This is due to a limitation of Microsoft Word. You can continue working after closing this warning message. However, to avoid high memory usage-related issues, you are recommended to close any unused applications on your system while working with X-Author for Contracts Advanced.

To open or open and update a contract document 

  1. Open Microsoft Word and launch the X-Author for Contracts Advanced add-in.

  2. Log in to X-Author for Contracts on the Conga Platform. 

  3. In the Contracts pane, go to Start tab > Search > Search Contracts. Under Sort By, you can select Last Modified or Version to sort the list of results.

    • The Last Modified sort option displays your documents in the order they were last modified, with the most recent modified document at the top. 
    • The Version sort order displays all versions of your document in descending order, with the highest numbered version at the top. 

  4. To view the complete contract name, either hover the mouse over the contract name or expand the X-Author pane.


    You can have up to five instances of a document open at a time. Each instance will be appended with a number. For example, if you have three documents open, the document will be titled as the following in the three instances: exampledocument(1).docx, exampledocument(2).docx, and exampledocument(3).docx. If you attempt to open more than five instances of a document, you will receive a warning message that the document is already open in a previous instance, and you must close at least one of the instances to proceed.

    At most 50 contracts are displayed in one instance in the Contracts pane. When you search contracts using filters, 20 contracts are displayed in one instance based on the search results and if you scroll further, 20 more contracts are displayed



  5. Enter the contract name or number as the search keyword and click the Search icon ().

  6. From the search results, click the Expand icon () of the contract you want to download. In the expanded description, click Documents. This opens the Contract Details page that lists all the versions of the document. To view the complete document name, expand the X-Author pane. 

    If there are no documents available in the contract, then the Documents button is disabled. If you hover over the Documents button, there will be a message displayed indicating " No documents are available for this contract". 

  7. To open a contract document version, click the More button () adjacent to the version and click Open. The document is opened in a new Microsoft Word instance. The document is automatically opened and locked by you (You'll see a message saying 'Document is locked by you'). This means that your contract is opened.

  8. To open and update a contract document version, click More button adjacent to the version and click Open and Update. The selected document is opened in a new Microsoft Word instance. 

  9. You'll get a message saying "Document is locked by you" and the X-Author Contracts pane directly opens the Update from CLM page. This page lists all Smart and ReadOnly fields with current values in Conga CLM. 

The admin can hide the Open and Update option for individual user profiles by disabling the custom permission setting for specific user profiles. For more information, see Admin Settings for X-Author for Contracts Advanced


Behavior and Limitations

  • X-Author for Contracts Advanced cannot open contract documents containing Microsoft Word 3D shapes.
  • Downloading and opening a Conga CLM contract document and converting it to X-Author for Contracts compatibility produces a converted document name that is not identical to the original document name.
  • You can have up to five instances of a document open at a time. Each instance will be appended with a number. For example, if you have three documents open, the document will be titled as the following in the three instances: exampledocument(1).docx, exampledocument(2).docx, and exampledocument(3).docx. If you attempt to open more than five instances of a document, you will receive a warning message that the document is already open in a previous instance, and you must close at least one of the instances to proceed.