Easier ways to selectively open a .wks as read-only...

[Tripp Knightly]

Excel has a way via its internal file-open mechanism any worksheet as
read only. This is great if you want to prevent damage to a sheet
(yours or god forbid somebody elses). If you're a pathological user
of Autosave like I am (to wit my related post on Autosave), you'll
know how good an idea this can be. I know there are some freeware
alternatives to Autosave (Autosafe, for example) but as a corporate
user, I can't really use/install freeware.

So I'm wondering: is there an *EASIER* way to allow me to open a .wks
as read-only? Going through Excel's open command is kind of kludgey.
What'd be really slick is if I could enable a Windows right-click on
all .wks files (or even Office documents in general).

This could prevent all sorts of problems... thoughts?

 

[Dave Peterson]

If you open that file via excel's file|open dialog, you can select the file,
then click on the dropdown arrow on the Open button and select "Open Read only".

In earlier versions, you could actually just rightclick on the file and select
"open readonly" (still in xl's file|open dialog).

And if you want, maybe marking the file readonly in windows explorer would be
ok.

Open windows explorer
traverse to that folder
select your files
rightclick|properties
toggle that readonly property on the General tab

If you never want to update them (historical purposes only???), it seems
reasonable to do this.

 

[Tripp Knightly]

Excel has a way via its internal file-open mechanism any worksheet as
read only. This is great if you want to prevent damage to a sheet
(yours or god forbid somebody elses). If you're a pathological user
of Autosave like I am (to wit my related post on Autosave), you'll
know how good an idea this can be. I know there are some freeware
alternatives to Autosave (Autosafe, for example) but as a corporate
user, I can't really use/install freeware.

So I'm wondering: is there an *EASIER* way to allow me to open a .wks
as read-only? Going through Excel's open command is kind of kludgey.
What'd be really slick is if I could enable a Windows right-click on
all .wks files (or even Office documents in general).

This could prevent all sorts of problems... thoughts?

Correction... make that a ".xls" file.