Remotely close a workbook

[Libby]

Hi guys,

I have a number of workbooks which various people update. These are
accessed by a Read only menu workbook which people have open. The problem
I'm having is that people tend to leave these workbooks open on their
computer, thus rendering them uneditable by others.
I tried the ontime timeout code but while this worked fine with one
workbook, if two workbooks start timing out simultaneously then I've found
that they interfere with each other.

What I want to know is if there is a way to save & close a workbook open on
someone else's computer.
I've tried this already by the following means.
The Read Only menu workbook, which everyone uses to open the workbooks, runs
a bit of code every 30 seconds. This checks a folder for text files and
compares the file names of those text files with the file names open editable
workbooks. If they match then the workbook is saved and closed and the text
file deleted.
So in order to save and close a workbook I simply create a text file in this
folder with the same name. This works for me but not with others.

All files are located on a networked drive.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Patrick Molloy]

I see no replies.

If people open workbooks with macro's disabled, there's no way to force a
workbook to close with code ... stating the obvious, sorry. But even with
code you cannot guarantee that the ontime events will work.

This is something I've never come accross. When in the past we've had a
spreadsheet 'locked' because a user has left it open, we had to get out IT
guys on the case.

Its very easy to copy excel workbooks, so i suspect that this is perhaps one
reason it can't easily be done and why waste the time and effor ...

it's probablyu worth thinking about putting your menu on to an intra-net
page. That way when you update the page, everybody gets the update when they
re-open or refresh the page.