Networking and Excel...Please help

cdhead13

Solid State Member
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Hello everyone, this is a pretty basic question to which i believe i know the answer but here it goes anyways. I have a customer that is trying to setup an excel file that can only be opened by one user at a time on a Win XP server. Basically anyone can open it at any time right now and when they save it screws up whatever was being done by the other person. Is there anyway to only allow one user to access this excel file at one time and when one person is in it it will give the other user attempting to open the file a error message. The customer believes its a win xp server but I'm not 100% sure of this, it could be server 2003. Anyways is there any way to accomplish this besides going to a basic access database. Thanks

- Chris
 
It should give an error setup that way- meaning each time someone wants to open it, it would give an error to the next person saying they could access the document, but in read only mode.
Really, if your customer is dealing with data, that could be in a database, it would be much better, and less work if a database was designed for the data. I say this from experience.
 
cdhead13 said:
Hello everyone, this is a pretty basic question to which i believe i know the answer but here it goes anyways. I have a customer that is trying to setup an excel file that can only be opened by one user at a time on a Win XP server. Basically anyone can open it at any time right now and when they save it screws up whatever was being done by the other person. Is there anyway to only allow one user to access this excel file at one time and when one person is in it it will give the other user attempting to open the file a error message. The customer believes its a win xp server but I'm not 100% sure of this, it could be server 2003. Anyways is there any way to accomplish this besides going to a basic access database. Thanks

- Chris

Under sharing you can set only one connection for the folder.
 
DJ-CHRIS said:
Under sharing you can set only one connection for the folder.


I looked under the sharing config. but there was little to change except settin the permissions to allow changes to the files/directory. I didn't see anything else but that...I could be looking in the wrong area. Please explain where this option is found cause this is the solution i was looking for. Thanks a bunch.

- Chris
 
did you say WinXP server? no such thing unless you are using WXPP on a computer as a standalone file server. STill not a great idea. you sure this setup is correct? could you get a screenshot (alt+print screen) and post it? i know in excel you can have it setup so that only the owner of the file can change it, however, if you have NTFS permissions you can administer this alot easier. Even easier if they are in a domain instaed of poop2poop(peer2peer) network.
 
systeq said:
did you say WinXP server? no such thing unless you are using WXPP on a computer as a standalone file server. STill not a great idea. you sure this setup is correct? could you get a screenshot (alt+print screen) and post it? i know in excel you can have it setup so that only the owner of the file can change it, however, if you have NTFS permissions you can administer this alot easier. Even easier if they are in a domain instaed of poop2poop(peer2peer) network.


I just called my customer back to verify the server OS info and its windows 2003 server. I was pretty sure that the XP info was wrong but i actually thoguht there was a way in xp to perform the same function. So since I'm talking about server 2003, how would i go about limiting access to the file to only one user at one time. So no one else can read/write when another has the file open. I would go there and try and figure it out but I'm doing all this on the phone and can't recall where i would do somethin like this off the top of my head. Thanks

- Chris
 
right click on the filename>sharing and security>security and make it so only her username has full control of the file, everyone else would have read access only.

btw, if she creates alot of files that others need to read but not change, do this for a folder and dump her files in the folder, easier to manage. Why aren't you using remote desktop to get into their server and her PC/?????
 
systeq said:
right click on the filename>sharing and security>security and make it so only her username has full control of the file, everyone else would have read access only.

btw, if she creates alot of files that others need to read but not change, do this for a folder and dump her files in the folder, easier to manage. Why aren't you using remote desktop to get into their server and her PC/?????


I would go in remotely but they have their own IT guy and I guess he doesn't seem to know whats going on so the customer called me up for alittle help. That sounds like it would work but what i need is to have 2 people who have read/write access but when either of these users have the file open i need to not allow the other access to open it. So when one user has it open it won't allow the other to open it and vice versa. Thats what im not too sure how to do. Thanks for the help.

- Chris
 
cdhead13 said:
So when one user has it open it won't allow the other to open it and vice versa. Thats what im not too sure how to do. Thanks for the help.

- Chris


I am not a secretary so I will only give you a clue: in excel, go to help, type sharing and look up the help topics. One of them will tell you how to share a speadsheet and have only one person or many ppl access and/or change it...i cant give you the complete answer ;)
 
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