If my computer freezes, which happens on occasions, I find that all my Excel files are 'locked for editing' when I reboot.  Is there any solution to this ?

Hi duncanisbbald,

You'll need to visit http://support.microsoft.com for help with your question. This Community is for Microsoft Office Live Workspaces questions and support only. For all other products and questions, the folks over at http://support.microsoft.com will be happy to help you out.

Sam

Hi Sam,

Sorry - I meant in Office Live Workspace it is locking me out.  When I reboot and try and open the files I have stored on Office Live, I am getting the message 'locked for editing'.  Is there any way round this ?

I have a similar problem when I have a file open in OfficeLive for some time, go to save it, and it "hangs".  I them have to abnormally close Excel on my laptop.  When I try to open the file from OfficeLive again, it tells me it's locked for editing.  I'm the only user of this file.  It appears others are having this problem but I am yet to see any response from Microsoft.

 Hi, mpukita and Duncan

 Hopefully, someone here has a definitive answer for you.  In the meantime, though not written for workspaces, I have found an article about the same issue with an Office server.

"When you click a hyperlink on your Office Server Extensions home page to open an Excel workbook, you receive the following message:

File is locked. In order to save changes to the file, you can either close the file before making any changes and then re-open it, use Save As (File menu) to save the file using another filename, or turn off Shared Workbooks and then save the file."

I'm not tech support so don't have all the answers but this may be worth a try.

The full article can be found here:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229483

Please keep us up to date.
 

Hi all,

 I've had a similar question/concern so I tried a simple test on OLW. I created and saved an Excel spreadsheet to the server and then opened it from the server for editing. While in Excel with the spreadsheet open, I killed power to the computer. After rebooting, I tried to edit the spreadsheet from the server as before. OLW recognized me (I didn't have to login) but my spreadsheet was "locked" (by me!) because of my previous session as expected. In read-only mode I saved it to my local machine as a <copy of>SpreadheetName. Closing the file locally in Excel in read-only mode changed nothing on the server. I then deleted the locked file on the server. I renamed my local file to its original name, uploaded it to the server, and opened it again for editing. No go - it was still locked. When I renamed my local copy to something different than the original name and uploaded it, everything worked. So it was possible to recover the locked file at the expense of assigning it a new name.

It seems like a document owner should be able to override an editing lockout that is known to have gone astray - just my two cents worth...

David

Another observation a day later - if you are the person locked out of a document **that you were editing**, after you have reconnected to the OLW server, sign out from the server without doing anything, then sign in again. This cleared an editing lockout situation for me.

Never saw a follow-up to this.  I had the same problem, but through Word, but I was able to resolve it without creating new files/rebooting.

The problem appears to be related to you being signed in with your LiveID, and if you have the Office Live Add-in as well.  In my scenario, I would

• sign in through workspace.office.live.com, and open up my document. 
• Word would start and I would start editing the doc. 
• My laptop would sleep some time later. Then I'd wake it up and word would tell me it had lost the connection.
• Attempting to close/open the file shows "locked for editing" by me.

My solution:

• Sign out of live workspace through your browser (this invalidates your LiveID on your browser)
• (important) Sign out of live workspace through Word!  This is an option in the "Open from Office Live" or Office Live save menus, and can be easily missed.
• Open the orignal document again (either through your browser or Word) and the doc is editable.

I only did this once, and didn't reproduce it.  hope it helps someone else.

For the Office Live team - if this reproduces, it's a really crappy, unintuitive experience.  There's no way a normal user would understand they are actually signed in twice.  Really need a feature that allows you to override the lock if you are the owner of the file.

I am also having problems with an Excel file that I uploaded where similarly I am unable to open it on OLW. After going to the tool bar and try to "SAVE AS" I am instructed to save it to the desktop. After doing so I am still unable to open it. I am using OS xp and Office 2003.

Thank you

I get the same problem.  If I have a shared excel document open, then my computer goes into hybernation, after I am out of hybernation, I'm unable to save the file.  It's really annoying as I may have made changes to the file and then can not save them because it is locked for editing by me.  I have to save a local copy.  Then delete the original, and re-upload the new copy.  Very annoying.

Any advice?

We are still looking for any other suggestions about this for the Japanese forum.

Any thoughts? 

Now there is a post suggesting that Excel files on Workspace can only be modified by the initial author. Is this correct?

https://officeliveworkspacecommunity.com/forums/p/1159/3578.aspx#3578

Given that Access files cannot be handled due to security concerns, if it's also true that Excel files cannot be edited by others, is there an efficient way to collaborate on the editing of a database file through Workspace? Our user was hoping to divide up the work of inputting monthly corporate statistics in a large database file.