Microsoft Office

Using Excel in a Workgroup 30
Jim has three choices:
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Select Cancel, wait a while, and try again. He may call the person who has the file reservation
and ask when the file will be available.
Select Read Only. This option lets him open the file to read it, but it doesn’t let him save changes
to the same filename.
Select Notify, which opens the file as read-only. Excel pops up a message that notifies Jim
when the person who has the file reservation is finished using the file.
Figure 30.2 shows the message that Jim receives when the file is available. If Jim opens the file as Read-
Write, he receives another message if he makes any changes to his read-only version. He will have an
opportunity to discard his changes or to save his file with a new name.
FIGURE 30.2
The File Now Available dialog box pops up with a new message when the file is available for editing.
Sharing Workbooks
Although Excel isn’t a true multiuser application, it does support a feature known as shared workbooks,
which enables multiple users to work on the same workbook simultaneously. Excel keeps track of the
changes and provides appropriate prompts to handle conflicts.
Although the ability to share workbooks sounds great in theory, it can be confusing if more
than a few users are sharing a single workbook. Also, be warned that this feature has been
known to cause problems, and it’s certainly not 100 percent reliable. Therefore, use caution and make
frequent backup copies of your workbooks.
CAUTION
Understanding shared workbooks
You can share any Excel workbook with any number of users. Following are a few examples of workbooks
that work well as shared workbooks:
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Project tracking: You may have a workbook that contains status information for projects. If multiple
people are involved in the project, they can make changes and updates to the parts that are
relevant to them.
Customer lists: With a customer list, records are often added, deleted, and modified by multiple
users.
Consolidations: You may create a budget workbook in which each department manager is
responsible for his or her department’s budget. Usually, each department’s budget appears on a
separate sheet, with one sheet serving as the consolidation sheet.
If you plan to designate a workbook as shared, be aware that Excel imposes quite a few restrictions on the
workbook. For example, a shared workbook may not contain any tables.
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