Mirroring excel file content

[bham]

Hello,

I have an excel file with a large amount of data that i need to make
accessible to a large number of users in the office. There are also a couple
of people who need to be able to edit this file to make changes.

The porblem that we have at the moment is that those who only need read only
access are currently locking the file from being edited if they open it 1st.

I thought the solution might be to copy the data into a separate readable
workbook using copy -> paste special -> link which i did by highlighting the
entire range of rows.

When i paste this into a new doc the file size becomes huge.
Original doc: 639kb
Linked doc: 297,503 kb

Is there a more efficient way to link an entire worksheet than selecting rows?

Or is there another way all together to fix the problem of read only people
locking the file from the editors?

Thanks

 

[ozgrid.com]

Share the Workbook
http://www.ozgrid.com/Excel/track-changes.htm

 

[Dave Peterson]

Maybe you could talk to your IT staff and get a common network share where some
users have readonly access and others have full rights.

Then the users with readonly access would be able to open the file without
locking it.

If that's not possible, you can give a workbook a password to open and a
password to modify. You can find the option on the Tools button of the SaveAs
dialog.

Be aware that passwords are easy to break (for a few bucks!) and they can be
shared by users.