File(s) on a network drive, with multiple users. Looking for strategy help

Hello everyone,

I am playing around with a userform to help me keep track of students who need to finish a class by a certain date, and I need to track their progress weekly. It is coming along very nicely, and I shared it with my boss who was pretty interested. She asked a question which I do not know the answer to, so I thought I would toss it out here.

How easy would it be to make this into something that a team of people could use simultaneously (we all work remotely)? As a shot in the dark there are a couple of different ways that I was thinking about looking at it, but I do not know enough to see which would be easier.

1. Independent files
For my stand alone copy, I have a master list of everyone who is on a plan, and then a list of all of the weekly progress checks. For a team of ten colleagues, it would not be hard to make everyone their own copy that is independent. I am sure that I could then make an administrator version that pulled all of the lists from the individual teacher files, and had the same functionality, and could send back any updates that they do to the individual files.

2. One file (this is the part I have no knowledge about at all)
Is there a way to do it where we could work out of one file simultaneously? We typically work out of dropbox or box. In dropbox, if two people are in the same file, we often get "conflicted" files, and it is saved with a different file name. That would hose me up pretty badly. Is it something that is even possible? Would it be possible to "lock the file" so that only one person could have the ability to edit it at a time?

Which direction would be more worthwhile to pursue?

Any ideas would be appreciated.

BobR

OK, thank you very much. I will look in that direction.

BobR