Stop People Copying a Workbook

[Deborah]

Is this possible (Excel 2002)

We have a workbook in a shared folder which many need to have access to
update the info in it. Problem is there are now 3 versions as obviously
someone has created a copy and entered info in that one and not the original
- there are 15 sheets in each one and now I have the horrible job of trying
to work out which sheets in each are most up to date and merge them back into
one - GRRR!

 

[Paul]

i agree

 

[Jacob Skaria]

SCROLL LOCK must be ON. Turn that OFF

 

[Deborah]

Sorry, but what has scroll lock got to do with it?

 

[Jacob Skaria]

Oops..Please ignore the post (It was wrongly posted)

 

[Dave Peterson]

The easiest approach would be to say that you're only supporting the single
official version. Tell your bosses to tell your coworkers that they'll have to
reenter their changes into that official version.

If the boss finds out that there is an unapproved version still floating around
(after xxx days), then that person is in big trouble.

Yeah, I know. This won't happen.

The real problem that I see is that even after you looked at each piece of data,
how would you know what version to keep. (And this is a miserable job just to
find the differences!)

If I had to do this, I'd make a 4th workbook and with 15 worksheets (one for
each of your sheets). Then I'd start copying the data from each of the 3
workbooks (all 15 sheets) into each of the new sheets.

But I'd offset the data -- drop it in column B. Column A would contain the name
of the workbook/worksheet that the row came from.

Then if you're lucky, you could sort/filter/look for changes in each group.
Mark each change (additional column per field??? or a single column for a change
found???). Then start manually updating the records. (Ugh!)

Ron de Bruin has lots of macros that could do the merging.
http://www.rondebruin.nl/tips.htm
(look for the "Copy/Paste/Merge examples" section.

============

As long as multiple people need access to the data (simultaneously???), you may
want to consider dropping excel and using a different application -- a real
database program (like Access???) that is made for keeping one version of that
data.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Nothing.

Jacob posted this to the wrong message.

Sorry, but what has scroll lock got to do with it?

 

[Jim Thomlinson]

There is no way to stop people from copying a workbook. Copying of files is
handled by your operating system. The XL file has no say in whether it gets
copied or not. Even if the copy was made by doing a save as in XL it is your
operating system that is ultimately doing the copy.

I am with Dave on this one. If you need to share information among many
users concurrently then XL is not a great choice. Databases are designed for
concurrent access.

 

[bala_vb]

Is this possible (Excel 2002)

We have a workbook in a shared folder which many need to have access t

update the info in it. Problem is there are now 3 versions a
obviously
someone has created a copy and entered info in that one and not th
original
- there are 15 sheets in each one and now I have the horrible job o
trying
to work out which sheets in each are most up to date and merge the
back into
one - GRRR!

I would like to recommend a software tool that helps you to compare th
spreadsheets. This is going to be some manual task also

try this link
http://www.formulasoft.com/download.html
-> download Excel compare