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Excel Locked for Editing Problem 2

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Bojangle

MIS
Mar 12, 2001
4
US
When trying to open a specific excel file we get the message "file is locked for editing.Click notify to open read-only copy of document and recieve notification when the document is no longer in use." We don't know why this is happening there aren't any other people working with this file. Does anyone know what we can do to resolve this problem?
 
Try to copy the file and rename it. If this works, then you can delete the copy supposedly still in use.
 
When you're working on a file, the application often stores a temporary copy. (I think for Office applications it leaves the original file locked, and the 'file' you actually work on has the original filename, but with a $ sign replacing the first character).

When you make an orderly exit from Excel, it saves the changed file and deletes the temporary copy, and flags the file as available. If you crash out/lose power, this is not guaranteed to happen. The file may remain locked. On a network there are several more ways this can happen.

Saving/renaming as above should work fine. If you have done a lot of work on the file, it's possibly worth looking for the temp file (which should be in the original directory, or maybe windows/temp directory) - it might be more up to date.



 
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