Who is this article for?

Review owners who manage reviews and need to understand when a review can or cannot be reopened.

No elevated permissions are required.

In some cases, a closed review can be reopened, allowing further changes or corrections to be made. However, this depends on both system configuration and the type of review. This article explains where the reopen option appears, when it is available, and why it is intentionally blocked in certain review workflows.

1. Reopening a review

If reopening has not been disabled in your system settings (for example, in Workgroup Management or related review settings), users can reopen a review from the Review Control Panel.

From the Review Control Panel, select the Review Closeout option. If reopening is allowed for that review, an option to reopen will be available within this area.

If the option to reopen is not visible, it is likely that reopening has been disabled in your organisation’s configuration.

2. When reopening is not possible

Even if reopening is enabled in settings, there are specific review types where reopening is intentionally not allowed.

2.1. Multi‑phase reviews

For multi‑phase reviews, reopening is not possible once a phase has been closed. At the point of closing, a decision is made about which comments or outcomes are passed forward to the next phase. Subsequent phases may already have progressed based on what was (or was not) sent on.

Allowing reopening in this scenario would break the integrity of the workflow, as later phases would no longer accurately reflect the information they were based on. To prevent this, the system blocks reopening for multi‑phase reviews.

2.2. Sub‑reviews

Similarly, sub‑reviews cannot be reopened once closed. When a sub‑review is completed, its comments or decisions may already have been passed up to a master review or onward in the process. Reopening the sub‑review would create inconsistencies between the sub‑review and the master or subsequent phases.

For this reason, reopening is disabled for sub‑reviews to maintain a consistent and reliable review history.

2.3 Integration requirements

For certain integrations, reopening the review may disrupt the workflow between Please Review and the external system. Therefore, the installation instructions advise disabling reopening in these cases.