Can’t open Excel file as read-only when other user has file open
Filed in tech news on Jun.09, 2008
I recently ran into the issue that users cannot open a file on the network as ‘read-only’ when one user already has the file open. Instead of receiving the option to open the file as ‘read-only’ they get the error: <filename> cannot be found. Check your spelling, or try a different path.
This problem seams to be specific to the user profile.
To fix this:
- Close Excel
- Open “RegEdit” from the command prompt from with in the users profile
- Backup the entire registry
- Now make these changes from within RegEidt:
- Expand: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\
- Right click the “Excel” registry key and rename it to something like Excel-OLD
- Exit “RegEdit”
- Open Excel. You will see “Windows Installer” popup and install something this first time you open Excel.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:22 am
I am having this identical problem but could not solve it by following the steps above. When I start excel, it starts normally and does not attempt to do any installing. There is a new excel entry in the registry key after starting excel.
Steps 5 & 6 seem incomplete. Could you supply any additional information.
Thanks,
Tom Davis
June 26th, 2008 at 10:40 am
It looks like the text my post got messed up somehow. I fixed it, so the instructions should be clear now.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Thank-you for your quick response. Unfortunately this is not working for me. Upon starting excel after changing the name of the registry key from ‘excel’ to ‘excel-old’, the application starts normally and does not invoke a windows installer popup. I have even tried a system re-start between renaming and launching excel.
Looking at the registry after launching excel I now have an ‘excel’ key and an ‘excel-old’ key.
Thanks for your help. I will keep plugging away at this.