Excel Templates Allowing Unrestrained Overwriting

[allen017]

Is not the raison d'etre of a template to allow normal users to access a document while preventing them from saving changes to the original?! There are certain users in our department for whom Excel inexplicably allows complete template overwriting capability of the original template, no question asked! Is this not a failure in the way that Excel templates are supposed to work?! Thanks!

[MarvinP]

Hi allen and welcome to the forum,

I think templates have at least 2 functions. First as a starting point for work you do repeatedly and second as an example you can learn from. You can save your work as a template or a worksheet, depending on how your workflow goes. See:

https://support.office.com/en-us/art...9-ad8baec39e1e

[Logit]

.
If a worksheet is unprotected, even a template sheet, anyone can edit it.

[shg]

Make the template read-only.

The default action (what happens when clicked or double-clicked) for a template is New. A user needs to deliberately choose Open from the right-click menu to open it rather than instance it.

[allen017]

Thanks everyone for your rapid responses! However, in the cases to which I am referring, both the “Protect Sheet” and “Protect Workbook” functions are fully engaged, and the saved templates are displaying the appropriate file extension, “xltx”. I’ve noticed that when the majority of our users, (including their creator-who is I), open these saved templates, the file names (as displayed in the title-bar) are automatically and immediately appended with the number “1”, and I’m guessing that this is what triggers Excel to automatically require any changes to be saved as a new document. However, in the case of a few problem users, this appending of the file name does not occur and any changes that they make to the template will immediately overwrite upon clicking the “Save” icon. We are operating on an Enterprise Network, so I’m wondering if perhaps that may be why the Excel workbooks are not functioning as they should for these particular operators, although our IT people seem to be completely stumped as to why this would be. Perhaps Bill Gates could tell us. Thanks!

[shg]

PEBKAC: It's because they are selecting Open instead of just double-clicking.

Again, make the template read-only.

Protecting the workbook or its sheets may be necessary for other reasons, but it's unrelated to this issue.

[allen017]

Thanks again everyone for your suggestions! However, we've now applied all of the suggestions including saving the document as the "Final-Read-Only" version (in addition to applying the "Protect Sheet" and "Protect Document" options) and explored the effect of Double-Clicking to open files vs using the "Open" function, and still we find that when these particular users access the template, make changes and select the "Save" option or icon, the template is immediately overwritten with their changes. Reminding these users to always select the "Save As" option rather than "Save" is a helpful workaround of course, since it usually prevents overwriting of the original, but it is less than optimal because it means that the templates are always vulnerable to inadvertent changes when people forget to use "Save As", which pretty-much defeats the whole purpose of the "template" concept! Additionally, when these users do remember to use "Save As", their new document automatically saves as a "template", which we've found to be problematic in certain situations. So, I'm still guessing that maybe this template failure is a function of the fact that we are operating across an enterprise network, and that possibly there is an incorrect security setting somewhere in the system. Unfortunately, apparently no one in our IT department is familiar with that particular setting. Thanks again for your suggestions though, at least we've ruled out a few more possible sources of the problem!

[shg]

Naming a file "Read Only" doesn't make the file read-only.

[allen017]

Hooray! Thank you "shg" for being persistent! Thanks to your tenacity, I was finally able to figure out that in order to ensure that my templates function as templates should for all users, not only does the workbook need to be saved as file-type "xltx", but when saving the templates, it also is necessary to select (from the Save As" window) the "Tools", "General Options", and "Password to Modify" options. It now appears that after jumping through all of these hoops, the templates are reliably functioning as they should. Thanks again for all your help!