"Locked for editing"

Please could anyone help?
I'm trying to open my workbook, but get the following message: "Locked for editing"
Thanks in advance.

This means that someone else has the spreadsheet open, and you are in read only mode.

I think you are partly correct. I also get the message that the program is in use. But no-one else is using the program, in fact I get this message when I try and open the workbook directly after I have rebooted.

Thanks for the reply Bruce,

For some reason Windows has frozen before, but after rebooting everything was ok. I followed instructions from Norton Antivirus and deleted files from my Temp folder. There is however one temp. file that will not allow me to delete it.

I have tried opening directly from my shortcut on the desktop. When l try opening
from Windows Explorer, I get the message : " Illegal operation has been performed. Program will be shut down "

In the morning, back at the office, I will try renaming and saving the file.

Thank you for the support.

If the file is "locked for editing", you will not be allowed to delete or rename it!

My question, why is it locked for editing? What are my options now? How do I open my workbook?

Is it pulling off another server, or just your PC? If it is pulling off somewhere else, I would suggest rebooting that computer.

If this doesn't work, just open your spreadsheet as read only, and do a save AS. Save it as another name, and you will be able to access it.

I am working off my PC only.
When I try and open as read only, I get the message: "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If problem persists, contact program vendor."

I tried opening in safe mode as you sugested, but the same message occurs.
I also get the feeling this is the end of the road for me. I hate to say that I have not made a back-up for about two weeks, thus hundreds of entrys have been lost.

Thanks for every ones help and sugestions, I will pop back regularly in the hope to yet find a solution.

What happens if you do NOT open the file, but right click on it and try to copy and paste it somewhere else? Then you can rename it and try to open the copy. That's my last suggestion! I hope it works!

I'm not sure if 'locked' means password protected and scrambles the file. But if it doesn't you could try opening with notepad to salvage some of the recent entries.

Then cut and paste back into excel to remove the weird characters.

dfeld71

I followed your sugestion, copied and pasted the file into another location. I entered my password and got the following message: "Microsoft Excel for Windows encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

____________________________________________________________

WREFORDT

I opened my file in Notepad, then copied all the weird characters into Excel. But was still left with al the weirdos. Is there a way I could fix this?

GOOD NEWS.........Thanks to everyone for sugestions and help.

I was fooling around, trying different ways of opening the file when, thanks to WREFORDT's sugestion of using Notepad, led me to right-clicking on the file and trying all the different options of opening the file. Acrobat Reader gave me the error message: "Could not open the file 'cause the file is either not a supported file or has been corrupted (for ex. it was sent as an e-mail and was not corectly decoded.)"
I then used Internet Explorer. Great was my suprise when I entered my password and my workbook opened. Truly an answer to prayers.

Thanks once again to Excel Help.

Okay, so this is my question. I am getting the message "Locked for editing" but I know why I am getting it. I am getting it because someone else is using it. Now for the question, how can I make it to where it's not locked for editing but me and 2 other people can edit it at the same time. We own a company and I really would like to find a way to do it. Help me please.

The thing is though I have it on a server right now and its in a shared folder.

Well if the file needs to be shared itself then how do I change it to "share"