File.xls is locked for editing by me but I am not using the file .

[rmtaylor]

Hi
I have an Excel spreadsheet that I share with another local office. When I try and open it, it says that it is locked for editing by me when I know this is not the case.
Excel will not allow me to open the sheet unless its in read-only mode. The last time this occurred I solved it by saving the file under a new name, consequently I had to reset shortcuts for the six others who impute data onto the sheet.
Any assistance to help me to solve this would be appreciated.

Thanks & regards
Robert

 

[TommyWizard]

I come from an IT Support background.
We have a customer who shares an Excel file for Sales forecasting and such and it suffers from this problem.

User 1 will go to open the file, The file says it is locked by User 2 but they (9/10 times) haven't opened it that day.

There is 6 people in the company who use this file and it can chop and change who it is locked by when this happens.
Now the file is located on a server on site, (A Small Business Server) and within Share and Storage Management > Manage Open Files > Filename.xls we can close the file from here and the users can all work away on it like normal.

We just cannot figure out why it is locking the file up. I Have not tried the method as posted by Bob Longmire but I am skeptical it will have a resolve rate for the issue. Its a pain for the customer but they understand that it is just one of these things that happens.

We have looked into disabling the SMB 2.0 but that will have a very negative effect on other services on the servers, one that not even this locking issue is not worth.

If anyone out there has a further idea or that or knows another solution I'd love to hear it!

 

[micfly]

Same here, I've tried every suggestion I could find to no avail. What's weird is we share all kinds of files and there is only one that keeps getting locked? Anyone have anything new to try???

 

[baha17]

Guys,
I came across this problem too. I hopefully found the solution by;
From folder option, click on "show hidden files" then it cleared the way. My reference is in the below link:
File locked for editing.
Thanks
Baha

 

[DecBel]

It was just a glitch in my case. The spreadsheet was open by a different user even though it was locked under my username. Once the other user closed the page, I was able to open it. I haven't found out why it was locked under my username, though.

 

[spicetrader]

I had this problem. I released the file by this procedure:
1. Open a command window. Start -> Run -> cmd.exe
2. On the command line, type
taskkill /f /im excel.exe

 

[moodymanitobamorning]

This is what worked for me.

I opened the "read only" file. I then ran the task manager, selected the "user" tab and disconnected my own user. The log-in page came up, I logged on and I was able to fully access the excel file.

 

[numcrun]

Ok,
I've had this problem for a while and decided to invest some time on it.... it's so frustrating since there was no apparent reason for the file to be locked up .
This is for people having the file locked by themselves (the error message tells you that you are the one locking it), you see no excel.exe open even if you check task manager.
After checking the DLL's and Handles with files on them, the result was cidaemon.exe having a lock on each of the excel files, this executable is resposible for indexing files in a Microsoft Windows environment.
I particularly don't require of this CPU consuming service so I went ahead and removed all catalogs from its configuration panel and turned it off.
You can find these options thru

Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Computer Management (I'm using Windows XP, you can search in other Windows flavors to get to the same place).

From there, go to Services and Applications > Indexing Service
Right click Indexing Service and select STOP

Here you can enjoy lock free excel files

To disable indexing I went ahead and deleted the so called Catalogs from that panel (System, Visio, etc).

As I mentioned earlier, this is a particular case and your's could be something else depending on your environment (i.e. Another user actually having the file open, you Antivirus refusing to let go, etc), but you can check this out as it doesn't hurt disabling Indexing for a moment.... If you particularly need indexing services, look for a way to avoid the location of these files in the configuration of the Catalog.

Hope it helps someone... as mentioned in previous posts.. there is not much help around... so many possibilities ...

Yes that worked for me! I have XP and Excel 2003. Excel opened the file as read only and said it was locked by me. I could not even delete it. My Excel file is not shared on the network at all. Thanks very much for working this out and sharing!

 

[aliwahyun]

Hi, I might have the same problem with you guys. the "xlsx cant be open because locked" problem. Only the different is I's using my own laptop which I don't share with anyone or network. I want to share one of the solution if you guys encounter the same problem. First, I will tell the what might caused me the problem. I'm using the excel for a financial projection for Project A. Then, I have another task, Project B. So, since the projection is quite similar, I just copy the Project A, and then paste into a new folder and saved it as Project B. So, whenever I try to open this similar Project B, popup came up the "xlsx" thing. So, I try to open the Project A first, then only I'm able to open Project B. Forgive me for my disability to explain things shorter. :P

 

[rabc2000]

I had the same problem, the only way I could resolve it was to use 'cleanmgr' and delete the tmp files this sorted the problem and releasted hard drive space which was being taken up by temp files and updates. 4.5GB in total.

 

[Seraph7]

I had the issue today. When I called the company's IT desk, they were able to fix it quickly.

They copied the URL of the excel file location, then started a blank excel page. They then clicked on File > Open and pasted the URL. Now instead of clicking the "open" button, they clicked on "open and repair...", which is the last option of the drop-down list. The file then asked if they wanted to open it as read-only or not --> So back to the original set-up.

The file was then no longer locked for editing by my username.

Hope this helps!