Disappearing Excel spreadsheets!

[WithoutMotive]

There comes a time when one has to give up clutching at straws and eventually post something online because you've completely exhausted all avenues. This is one of those times and I'm hoping you people can help.

 

Our Data Manager has a number of Excel spreadsheets that staff are required to complete. She wanted to share them with staff without them receiving the dreaded "Document locked for editing by " message and initially went down the root of Office365 online. This was a great solution at first and everyone was happily filling in the spreadsheet, until it came to sorting and filtering. If one or more people decided they wanted to sort the data in a certain way or filter the data to only show their class, it would do so for everyone else who was working on the spreadsheet at the time... apart from the cell they were typing in at the time. Therefore, the data would be all over the place. In our case, comments about certain pupils would appear next to the wrong pupil.

Looking into this, it appears that Microsoft are aware but it's just not a thing at the moment - Excel Filtering

 

Due to the above, it was then decided to continue to use the Excel application and use the sharing feature provided within the application. Again, this appeared to work well until we started experiencing something very weird - files were disappearing of their own accord. For no reason, when someone who was editing the spreadsheet went to save, they were faced with the "File not found" message and noticed the file had completely disappeared. No other person was using the file. No one had moved or deleted it.

 

I have done the following to try and get to the bottom of it:

 

• Copied the original file and started editing it - eventually the file disappeared when I was saving
  
• Moved the original file to another location - again the file disappeared
  
• "Unshared" the file and start editing - the file didn't disappear
  
• Created a new file, shared, and started editing - the file didn't disappear
  

This all seems to happen during a random save operation and only to shared files. Other than the fact they are shared, I can't find anything in common with the files to relate to why they're disappearing. The only thing I have found online is a similar issue with DFSR, however we don't use that.

If anyone has experienced similar or can give me some more options, it would be most appreciated. Anything to stop me going a bit crackers!