User can't open excel spreadsheet locked by themselves?

[reggiep]

One of our users has shown me a problem that when she tries to open a spreadsheet in her own docs it sometimes tells her that it is locked for for editing because she has it open!

She isn't logged on anywhere else only the one machine. It's almost random but happen more if she has just been on the spreadsheet and then come out of it. Also every time she opens the spreadsheet and closes it, it always asks if she wants to save the changes even though she has done nothing to it!

 

Has anyone seen this before?

 

[LosOjos]

If her machine recently crashed/shut down/logged off while she was editing the document, the lock file might still be present in her documents or possibly the temp folder.

 

Try clearing out her temp folder first, then look to see if there's a hidden file in the same folder as the spreadsheet called something like "~$example.xls" (where the original workbook is called "example.xls"), if so, delete it and try again.

[pete]

Is she closing it down cleanly? I've seen it happen where Excel crashes out on computer A and the end-user moves to computer B only to be told the document is open elsewhere.

 

Is she using the spreadsheet directly our generating/accessing/launching Excel via SIMS, Sage, or something? I've seen both hold a document open before now - there'll be a process in task manager for Excel, but unless the end-user looks for it they won't notice.

[GeekyPete]

Are the spreadsheets in a shared area or her own folder? Do you have even momentary losses of connection?

[clareq]

I've seen something similar when preview is enabled on their folders.

[reggiep]

I've seen something similar when preview is enabled on their folders.

 

preview is enabled on her folder!

[simpsonj]

I've also had a similar issue when the Status bar is enabled. I'd also recommend turning off preview too!

[SkreeM1980]

Preview causes all sorts of file locking issues, we see it all the time.