Excel 2003 users cannot open a file which is locked by a 2010 user

[johncassell]

Hi, could someone help with this please. We have a couple of users who are using Excel 2010 and more users on Excel 2003 and if we are using a 2010 version file (.xslx) WITH password protection, it acts wierd..

1. if no-one is using the file and someone tries to open it (using either 2003 or 2010) then it opens with no problem

2. if a 2003 user is in the file and either a 2003 or 2010 user tries to open it they get the usual "file is locked for editing by john.smith. Open Read only"

3. if a 2010 user is in the file and a 2010 user tries to go into it they get the usual "file is locked by john.smith"

4. if a 2010 user is in the file and 2003 user tries to go into it, they get "filename.xlsx cannot be accessed. The file may be read-only, or you may be trying to access a read-only location. Or, the server the document is stored on may not be responding.

So in short, if a 2010 user is in the file - absolutely no 2003 users can get in it (even read only is not an option)

I know everyone has probably moved on from 2003 now but if you know of a solution to this then I would love to hear it (apart from just removing the password - everything works when it's not password protected but I'd rather it was protected)

[dominicb]

Good afternoon johncassell

Not sure of this is the answer you're looking for, but Excel 2003 shouldn't be able to open .xlsx files - this format was introduced with Excel 2007.

With this in mind, is the information you have supplied above still correct?

HTH

DominicB

[Roel Jongman]

There were some addins released in 2010 that allowed 2003 to handle xlsx files but only the basic / most used functions.

more advanced functions were not part of the addin functionality. That is why Excel 2003 just errors out when an excel 2010 user is in the file.

something you will have to live with..

[johncassell]

Hi, thank you for both of your replies. Yes we use the compatibility pack to open the more advanced files for years and we've never really had any issue with it but as we are having more people use 2010 it seems we've finally hit a snag!

Guess I'll just have to accept it. Thank you