"copy of" files

[Stephen Larivee]

I have a spreadsheet on a network drive at work. It is there for several
people to be able to open and edit. Recently I noticed about four files
where there had been only one. They begin "Copy of file" and Copy of copy
of file. What is happening? Does this happen by itself when one person has
the file open and someone else comes along and opens the same file? What am
I doing wrong with my set up that this is happening? I would like just one
file with no Copy of files to occur.

Thanks

 

[Dave Peterson]

Some one could be using windows explorer and making a copy of the file.

Or (more likely), two people have the file open.

The first user has it open in read/write mode and the second user has it open in
read-only mode. But the second user doesn't notice it.

Then the second person tries to save that file and excel says that it's readonly
(and that second user ignores that warning, too!). Then excel provides the
SaveAs prompt and the user doesn't notice that either--or that the name now
includes that "copy of..." prefix.

The bad news is that there isn't too much you can do besides some training.
Make sure that the users know what's going on.

The real bad news is that there isn't a good way to look for the changes that
the users made in these "copy of" files. If you toss those files, you will lose
those changes. And maybe some are important.

 

[Stephen Larivee]

Thanks a lot. This will be very helpful to me. I have used Excel for quite
a while but not this way, with a file on a shared network drive with
multiple users.

Thanks again, Dave.