Excel file management under Outlook

[JStaderman]

My company uses Microsoft Outlook as it's email client and also as
posting location for public documents. I have a public folder where
have posted two excel files (Data.xls and Graphs.xls) dedicated fo
community use. The information in the Data.xls file is used t
generate charts in the Graphs.xls file using cell references.

A problem occurs (sometimes) when I open the Data.xls file to enter ne
data. It appears that Excel saves the file to a temporary folder on m
local machine during editing. Unfortunately it also sometimes adds
"1" to the end of the file name (Data1.xls).

If this happens, when I open the Graphs.xls file to update my charts
the references are all corrupt because it cannot locate Data.xls, onl
Data1.xls.

How can I keep excel from changing the file name?

The same thing sometimes happens to the Graphs.xls file, but it doesn'
matter since there are currently no references to the Graphs.xls file.

I've had some success by opening the temporary folder where the proble
occurs and deleting any previous versions of the two files, but this i
not the correct way to solve my problem I'm certain.

Is this problem a result of the autosave being enabled? Because
would rather not lose that nice feature

 

[Dave Peterson]

I don't have an answer, but our company used to use Netscape Messenger for our
email client. It had the same problem (appending a number to the filename).

I used to clean up my Windows Temp folder (where Netscape Messenger saved the
temporary file).

If you don't get a good response here, you may want to post this question in one
of the Outlook newsgroups.

(Another workaround that maybe even uglier is to use Edit|Links and change the
name of the linked workbook--but that would be a pain, too.)

Good luck,

 

[RWN]

Are you sure you're opening an "xls" file and not a template?
XL will add a number to a file if it's an "XLT" and is "opened" using
"New".
For ex, if "Data.xlt" is initiated from the "New" menu, then it creates
a file called "Data1.xls"
If you turn around and do it again it creates a "Data2.xls" and so on.
It has to do this to ensure that the filenames are unique because it
doesn't have a clue as to what you're going to name the file once you've
done your updates.
I don't know if this fits your situation (MSO-public folder), only that
the behaviour matches a template being opened.

HTH