Unable to save Microsoft Excel files when Microsoft Excel viewer has files open

ERROR: "Your changes could not be saved to because of a sharing violation. Try saving to a different file."

ERROR: "Your changes could not be saved to'', but were saved to a temporary document named ''. Close the existing document, then open the temporary document and save it under a new name.

When Excel viewer has a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet opened, even if in read-only mode, if a user opens the same file in Excel, the user with full file writes is unable to save their changes made to the spreadsheet.

It does not matter if Excel or Excel Viewer open it first. The Excel user is unable to save their changes.

If the Excel spreadsheet is accessed via CIFS on a NetWare server, then the problem does not exist.

If the Excel spreadsheet is accessed via CIFS on a Windows server (or workstations), then the problem does not exist.

If the Excel spreadsheet is opened by Excel with an NCP connection and Excel Viewer opens the same file via CIFS, then the workstation running Excel cannot save changes to the file.

Same problem exists on Traditional or NSS volumes.

Microsoft Word is able to save files when the Word Viewer is viewing the same Word document.

Microsoft PowerPoint is able to save files when the PowerPoint Viewer is viewing the same PowerPoint presentation.

This is working as designed. Here is an explanation as to what is happening and why.

When Microsoft Excel opens a file, it opens the file with read and write permissions. Excel creates a temporary copy of the Excel spreadsheet that you are working on. When you click on the save button, Excel writes all the data to the temporary file, and then renames the temporary file to the original Excel spreadsheet file name.

Excel viewer opens the file in read-only mode and keeps the file open while it is viewing the contents of the file. When Excel writes the changes out, it makes the changes to the temporary file and then Excel tries to rename the temporary file to the original file name. Because Excel viewer has the file open, the NetWare operating system does not allow for the file to be renamed. Thus the failures occur.

You do not need to be running Excel to experience this problem. If you were to run NWADMN32 from SYS:\PUBLIC\WIN32 directory and then you were to try and rename NWADMN32.EXE to something else, you willd get an error and you will be unable to rename the file. The reason for this behavior is to prevent file corruption from occurring.

Apparently the CIFS protocol allows files that are open in a read-only mode to be overwritten when another workstation has the same file opened in read/write mode. You can enable and configure CIFS on your NetWare server and then configure your workstations to access your Excel files via CIFS. For further information on how to configure CIFS, please see the following documentation on CIFS:

Another potential workaround is to go out to the OpenOffice web site ( http://www.openoffice.org/ ) and download and install the latest version of OpenOffice in lieu of the Excel viewer. If you have an Excel file open by another workstation, OpenOffice will detect the file is open and will open the Excel file in read-only mode. It will read the contents of the Excel file and then close the file. This will allow the first workstation that is editing the file to save the file without issue.

Since OpenOffice Calc (the OpenOffice equivalent of Excel) is more than a viewer, you may want to consider what file system rights the person viewing the Excel files have. If you want them to simply view the files and not modify them, you will need to give Read and Filescan (RF) rights to that user object for the directories where the Excel files are located. Those that need to modify and create Excel spreadsheets will need Read, Write, Create, Erase, Modify, and Filescan (RWCEMF) file system rights at the directory level for those spreadsheets they are responsible for. (NOTE: You will not want to grant rights at the file level, but at the directory level. Any file level rights of RF will be overwritten the first time the file is saved.)