Possible for users to open file at the same time?

[Guest]

I am using Office 2003 on Windows XP.

Scenario: I have an Excel file uploaded into an Outlook folder. When users
open this file it automatically generates a form number on-open that uses the
date and time down to the second. All form numbers must be unique, but NOT
necessarily in sequence.

Question: Given the scenario above, is it possible for two or more users to
open this file at precisely the same moment and receive the same form number?
Or is that impossible? Would one or all get an error? Or is there some way
--- code wise --- to prevent that from happening? Remember, this is in an
Outlook folder which allows users to open a copy of the file - but not change
the original...

Thanks much for your assistance.

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

In response to your other post, I provided a method to get beyond a second.
The probability that any two people would get the same number would be
extremely small.

 

[Guest]

I must have checked for over-night and early morning responses to my previous
post just before you posted. Thanks Tom.

That probability needs to be on the impossibility side of the statistics,
because if two people wind up with the same number it will cause real issues
in our A/P department.

Thanks again.

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

I also suggested you can prepend the number with a user ID in the form of
letters or it you want it to be numbers you could do that as well, but then
it would have to be treated as a string since numbers can only hold 15
significant digits. With the user ID prepended, I believe it would be
impossible to open two copies of the same template within the same time
serial unless perhaps the openings were done with code.