Published workflow is displaying "checked out by"

[Kawshal29]

Hello All, 

I am currently working on the Change Request workflows. On my prod instance, we have an Emergency Change Request workflow which was checked out by one user around 4yrs ago. That user never published his version of workflow. After that the workflow was updated according to the client’s requirements. The current version of workflow is showing as Published (checked out by) and due to this we are not able to checkout the workflow and make the changes.

We had the same problem in the dev environment, so we force checked out the workflow version that was previously checked out by another user and then we deleted that version of the workflow. After doing this we were able to checkout the workflow and make the changes to it.

Now we need to move this updated workflow to prod using the update set. But here’s the thing, On prod instance the workflow is showing as Published (Checked out by) as in the image below.

1. I need to know that whether it will be good if directly move my update set to prod by keeping the workflow on the prod as Published (Checked out by). Will it cause me any issues or the workflow will be updated with the new updates?

2. If I force checkout the workflow version on prod that was checked out and never published and then try to delete it. It will be the same thing that I did on my dev environment. After deleting that version, I will move my update set to prod environment. Will it be good to directly delete the workflow version on higher instance?

3. If I force checkout the workflow version on prod that was checked out and never published and then try to publish it. Will publishing the old checked out version  make that old version the as current version of the workflow making all the new versions as previous version of workflow?