Excel 2007 Files Being Locked on 2000 Server With Vista Clients?

[ShipWreck]

Ok I have several users that are running Vista on their mahcine and running
Excel 2007. They are saving their Excel 2007 files on a Windows 2000 Server
and when they go back to open some of them they get a error.

The Error says that " this file is locked for editing" and you only have
ready only access. Now allot of times it shows the username who has the file
locked and most of the time its the person that created the file. Even if I
go try to open and I have full Admin rights I still get the same error.

It seems this happens more with our users that have Vista running on their
machines and also seem to started when we went to Office 2007. Now the only
way I have been able to Fix this is by rebooting the server. But there has to
be some work around or some fix for this due to it's starting to happen more
often and with more than one user. Any Help would be much appericated.

Thanks! ShipWreck

 

[Gord Dibben]

When Excel has a file open, it creates a temporary file also.

Closing the file should cause the temp file to be deleted.

Sometimes it isn't and Excel thinks the file is still open.

A re-boot is generally the only method of clearing out the temp file.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Dave Peterson]

Just to add to Gord's response...

xl2007 creates a temporary file in the same folder as the file being opened. It
starts with a ~ (tilde) (I think). I don't use xl2007 enough to be useful, but
you may want to look for that file on the server and try to delete it to see if
that helps.

It may be hidden, so make sure you look for hidden files, too.

On the other hand, xl2003 and below work differently.

Maybe one of these from Debra Dalgleish's site will help:
http://contextures.com/xlfaqApp.html#ReadOnly
http://contextures.com/xlfaqApp.html#AlreadyOpen

(And I've seen where rebooting the pc with the file (includes the server) was
the only thing that released that file.)

 

[ShipWreck]

Yeah I saw the temp file deleted them off the server try opening the Excel
2007 file and still get the error. I did notice some excel tmp files on the
temp folder on the server removed some of them the others say their in use by
another program. Yes rebooting the server seem to fix this issue but trying
to figure out why its doing this that way we dont have to reboot the serever.
Again thanks for the response.

 

[ShipWreck]

Weird I now noticed after I delete the temp files off the server they are
coming back?? Whats up with that?

 

[Dave Peterson]

Excel will use the windows temp folder for things like controls on the worksheet
or userforms. It's normal and expected.

The bad news is that it doesn't always clean up after itself. In fact, one way
to try to improve excel's speed is to clean up that windows temp folder.