MS Excel issue

[beanhead07]

We have a folder on a file server at my office that I am getting several complaints from people that the excel files this folder has in it are showing up as read-only. I checked the folder settings all the way down to the excel file itself and domain users are set to have modify privileges on it. I even gave them Full Control to see if that would help but all the users are still getting the excel file showing as "read-only." I have checked a couple of the users' profiles to make sure it wasn't a permissions error and they had administrative rights to the PC. I really don't understand what could be causing this. The users that I have checked all are running MS Office 2003 and the file was created using Office 2007 but the users have the Offie 2007 compatibility pack installed and are able to view the file but not modify it. I'm not quite sure what to give you as far as PC specs since it's happening on a pretty wide range of PCs, but in general they are all running Pentium 4's, with at least a 40GB HDD, 1GB RAM, Windows XP Professional. All with SP3 and the latest updates. Any ideas? Thanks for any help.

[beanhead07]

Also, I don't think it's an issue where someone has it open somewhere else because I checked several other excel files which they should have been able to modify but all of them were coming up as read-only.

[Computer_Commando]

Are the files protected?    Open one up with Excel and look under Tools---Protection.
I've got Office XP (Excel 2002).

[BC_Programmer]

Also, setting the "Full Control" ACL to "Allow" doesn't automatically give "Full control"... a "deny" ACL will override that, so make sure there are no "Deny" ACLs listed on the drive/file.

[beanhead07]

Thanks for the suggestions. I checked to make sure no "Deny" ACL was checked (there wasn't) and then checked to see if the spreadsheet was protected which it was not. Any more ideas? Thanks again!

[mroilfield]

Have you tried to move the files to a different folder to see if they can use them?

[beanhead07]

I have not tried that yet. I'll give that a shot today and post the results. Thanks!

[soybean]

Also, I don't think it's an issue where someone has it open somewhere else because I checked several other excel files which they should have been able to modify but all of them were coming up as read-only.

I think you need to examine this issue closer.  Let's say one user has an Excel file open.  Since that user is the only person to have it open, that person should be able to modify the file and should have gotten no notice about being limited to read-only when opening it.  I believe any other users who open the file subsequent to the first user, while the file is still open by the first user, will get the notice about being limited to read-only. 

Do you agree with this?

[beanhead07]

Yeah I definitely agree with that soybean, but there are certain excel files that are doing that that only 3 people have acces to: administrator, dept manager and assistant dept manager. The assistant dept manager wasn't here when I tested it, and I (administrator) didn't have it open under an administrative account, but I opened it on the dept manager's login and he got the read-only message. So at least with that file I don't think that is the issue. That could be a very possible issue with the other files but I am kind of thinking that if that many files are having this issue it's probably all tied to the same cause, but I could be wrong. I will definitely check into that more as well. Thanks for all the suggestions!