file locks when saving shared workbooks

M

mary

Our team shares a workbook that updates the VSM’s sheets for tracking orders.

Saves are generally not a problem, however, occasionally; we encounter an
error indicating the workbook is locked by <name>, try again later. Usually,
waiting and attempting to save a few minutes later will work but yesterday
the individual even quit out Excel and the error still occurred. I finally
did a “save asâ€, quit Excel and re-opened the shared spreadsheet. The
message indicated it was in use & I would need to open as Read Only or be
notified when it was ready for editing. When I was able to edit/save, the
message appeared indicating it was locked by <name> & did I want to
override….I selected “Yesâ€.

I doubt this was the best choice.

What is the best method for handling file locks/overrides ?
 
J

jazz-MIA

Hi Mary,

I'm having the same problem in my office and it started about 3 weeks ago.
I've been running this shared file for 5 years and never had this problem
befire. I'm running win2k3 std server; office 2003. I was wondering if you
have macros in your shared sheet because I do.

I have two separate spreadsheets that are shared: One is a backorder report,
and the other is an outbound report. With the back order report I saved the
sheet as a tab delimited file to shed all formatting, macros etc. I then
opened the .txt file in excel, recreating formatting, conditional formatting
rules, and added the macros. I save the sheet with a new name and placed in a
directory where the users who need access to the file have full control. I
reshared the sheet. So far (two weeks) it has been working without any file
lock outs. I am now starting to get the lockout error in our outbound report.
Before I do what I did with the backorder report, I was hoping to find the
root of the problem instead of a work around. Have you had any luck since you
wrote this?

Jazz.
 
J

jazz-MIA

one more thing, I've found that when you have a file lock and you are asked
to override, make sure that the only person that is in the sheet is the one
with the error and select yes to override. After that I've saved, opened and
closed the file and ensured no more locks (for the time being) and that other
users are able to get in the shared sheet as well.

Jazz.
 

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