Other "Phantom" Users

Jim Phillips expressed his frustration with an error message he periodically gets when trying to save a workbook to a network drive. The workbook is located on the drive, and he opens it with no problem. After making a couple of changes, he tries to save the file and gets the following:

   The file 'myfile.xls' may have been changed by another user since
   you last saved it. In that case, what do you want to do?

Jim knows that there are no other users with the file open, and is curious as to why Excel would think that there were.

According to Microsoft, this is actually a feature introduced in Excel 2002. It was included to deal with data security issues on unstable networks. For instance, if you open a file on a network, and then lose network connectivity for some reason, someone else could open the file while you are temporarily disconnected.

When you then try to save the file, Excel compares the time stamp on the file as it exists in your computer's memory with the time stamp of the file on the network drive. If the time stamp of the network version is later than the time stamp of the one in memory, then the message is displayed.

There are instances where Excel can display the message, even when it shouldn't have. Microsoft has patched Excel to prevent these "false positives," and released the fix as part of Excel 2002's service pack 3. More information on this problem (and how to fix it) can be found in the Knowledge Base:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=324491