Shared workbooks locking up?

[RSW]

Hello!

I've been having a problem with some Excel charts at my workplace that are shared. For some reason every once in a while when someone tries to open them, they get an error message that it is locked by someone else, but that person is actually not even in the file. That same person gets the error message when they try to open it. I've tried to research the problem but cannot find any solutions. Sometimes the file unlocks by itself later in the day and sometimes we just open it as read only and re-save it as a shared workbook with a new name but data can get lost. Does anyone have any information on how to troubleshoot and fix this?

 

[boblarson]

Does anyone have an Access database linked to it? That can lock it up.

 

[unmarkedhelicopter]

I assume the 'shared' file is on a server ?
Do you know what server ?
Sometimes (normally quite rarely) the local worstation and the server get out of sync. When the workstation opens the file it tells the server and the server puts a lock on the file, if something happens at the workstation the server can keep the lock even with that workstation off line.
It happens more with 'some' servers than others.

 

[RSW]

No Access database linked to it.

Yes it's on a server, and yes I know exactly where. Is there anything I can do to stop this from happening. Is a user doing something incorrectly to leave it locked?

 

[unmarkedhelicopter]

Do you know what server ?

So what is the server ?
Windows NT 3.5 ?
A flavour of Linux ?
Novell ?

Or is it a workgroup environment ?

 

[RSW]

It is on a company share drive. All I can see in its properties are that it is 1.94 TB and NTFS. Is that enough info?

 

[unmarkedhelicopter]

My home server reports NTFS too, it's actually an ext3 journalling
No, if you don't know, I'm sorry I can't help !

 

[RSW]

I'll do what I can to find out. Thanks.