Excel documents in a library not locking as expect

[lskarha]

We have MOSS 2007 and Office 2007.

When a Word document is opened from a SharePoint library, a user CAN NOT make any changes untill they click ‘Edit Document’, which in turn locks the document for editing. (Pessimistic locking)

When an Excel document is opened, a user CAN make changes without clicking ‘Edit Document’. This does not guarantee they will be able to save their changes if second user makes changes before the first user. If the first user clicks ‘Edit document’ after a second user has saved their changes; the first user is told there is a newer version and asked if they would like to load it. (Optimist locking)

Thus, if a user makes changes before clicking ‘Edit document’ their changes may be lost.

I find it odd that Word and Excel handle these locking scenarios differently.

Could someone please duplicate this and let me know if the results are the same.

Also, does anyone know how to keep Excel from allowing the user to make changes until they clicks ‘Edit Document’. We want this to work the same in Excel as it does in Word.

Thanks,
-Lee

[Jay Mueller]

Aug 15, 2008 9:14:45 GMT -6 lskarha said:

We have MOSS 2007 and Office 2007.

When a Word document is opened from a SharePoint library, a user CAN NOT make any changes untill they click ‘Edit Document’, which in turn locks the document for editing. (Pessimistic locking)

When an Excel document is opened, a user CAN make changes without clicking ‘Edit Document’. This does not guarantee they will be able to save their changes if second user makes changes before the first user. If the first user clicks ‘Edit document’ after a second user has saved their changes; the first user is told there is a newer version and asked if they would like to load it. (Optimist locking)

Thus, if a user makes changes before clicking ‘Edit document’ their changes may be lost.

I find it odd that Word and Excel handle these locking scenarios differently.

Could someone please duplicate this and let me know if the results are the same.

Also, does anyone know how to keep Excel from allowing the user to make changes until they clicks ‘Edit Document’. We want this to work the same in Excel as it does in Word.

Thanks,
-Lee

Hi Lee,

We noticed the differences as well; this also is an issue because merging documents is handled totally different depending on the Office Suite application being used. With that said; what we did was require users to have 'Checked-Out' the document before working with it. This will force a Read-Only view in either Office application and then allow the user to save a local copy for merge later or be notified when the document is available. We found this to be the easiest without making a mess of our documents.