Workbook sharing

[Guest]

Problem starts with switch on Workbook sharing in Excel (Tools->Share
Workbook). With this file are working about 9 users at the same time and file
is about 2 MB. Everobody opens file and makes changes then save and close
Excel. Another opening sometime by somebody generates these message
:"EXCEL.exe generated error and will be closed by Windows system. Program
must be restart.ed." and Excel shut down. Another user see in window Workbook
sharing (Tools->Share Workbook) that user is connected but it´s not true.
First user no more can open shared Excel workbook. Sharing must be canceled.
And user with problem now can opeh this file and he can switch on sharing.
Now users can work all with file until problem occurs again to someone else.

We worked with this file for one years in sharing mode and now we have these
problems...

 

[Arvi Laanemets]

Hi

Excel isn't best application for shared use - I myself avoid file sharing in
Excel whenever it is possible.

When it's possible to split your data in such a way, that every user input
is allowed only in his own subset of data, then my adwice will be to split
your workbook to 9 separate ones, situated on same network resource as your
current workbook. Those new workbooks aren't shared, and every user is
reponsible for his workbook.

You can get data from all user's workbooks together into master workbook
through links or through ODBC queries - without affecting user's workbooks
at all. This info in such master workbook is for wiewing only (but it is
possible to allow the entering of additional info - how to do this, depends
on master workbook design). The master workbook can simply mirror data from
all user's workbooks, or collect data accordingly some criteria, or get some
generalized data etc. You can have practically unlimited number of such
master workbooks, and you can design every one of them individually. When
some user(s) need to see some data from another user(s) workbook(s), then
this can be done through links too.

When several users must work all with same subset of data in input mode,
then maybe you consider switching to MS Access or to some other database
application.