Excel Workbook Sharing Fails After Install of Office SP2

[Carey Campbell]

We have been using Workbook sharing in Office 2003 SP1 for months without any
problems. We just updated Office 2003 with the Office 2003 SP2. Now the
shared Excel workbook appears to save without a problem but later when the
file is reoponed and after a another user has saved, all of the first users
changes are gone even though that user saved these changes repeatly
throughout the day. Shared Excel workbook is set to automatically create a
backup copy. Only 2 or 3 users share the workbook which is password
protected. The File is saved on a Shared directly on an Windows server 2003.

Immediately after install Office 2003 SP2 we started to get errors stating
that there were not enough resources for Excel to save. Hard Drive space is
not an issue on any of the computers. I did cut the file down to about 4.5
MEG from 8Meg in an attempt to solve the problem but this did not have any
effect. After the error the file appears to continue to save and will appear
to save again normally.

Any Insight would be appreciated.

 

[Kassie]

Hi Carey

If you click on Tools | Share Workbook, and then select Advanced tab, check
whether the option "Changes being saved wins" under Confilcting changes
between users is ticked. Sounds as if this is your problem.

 

[Carey Campbell]

Thanks, That's a valid answer but the spreadsheet has been set to 'Ask which
Changes win' setting from the beginning and still are. I double checked to be
sure. I am able to work with smaller shared files and this setting functions
as designed. If you read the original post again you will see that this
problem occurs after there is a warning message relating to either available
internal memory or lack of some other resource. I suppose that when this
error occurs, it could be setting the mentioned setting back to the other
setting without notifying me.

I tested this and no changes are being saved by either computer period
regardless of the setting. After several saves that do not generate error
message, One or the other will drop an error message that 'Excel cannot
complete this task with available resources. Choose less data or close other
applications.'

On the face of the error message, It appears that there may be an
unpublished limitation to the size of files that can be shared. I have cut
the size of this file by half from what we have been using prior to
installing Office 2003 SP2.

I took a single tab out of the offending spreadsheet and pasted into a new
spreadsheet and the same resource error problem ocurred almost immediately
even with all other programs closed.

My I suspect the Office 2003 SP2 added a layer of security that is
interferring with the WEP encryption on our Wireless Network. I haven't had a
change to see if the same issue exists when both computers sharing the sheet
are wired to the network.

Thanks anyway
Carey