PERSONAL.XLSB error message when open multiple instances of Excel 2010 inside Caseware

I have created a customized toolbar using macros in Excel 2010 on a Windows 7 operating system. The macros are stored in PERSONAL.XLSB (i.e. they are global and can be used on excel document). Only when multiple instances of Excel (e.g. opening more than 1 excel file) are opened in Caseware Working Papers 2012 (Version 2012.00.033 (Release 2)), do we get the following error message:

"FILE IN USE
PERSONAL.XLSB is locked for editing
by [User]
Open 'Read-Only' or click 'Notify' to open read-only and receive notification when the document is no longer in use.

Button options: "Read only", "Notify" and "Cancel".

For now, we click on "Read only" and we can still use the customized toolbar on all excel documents.

Is there any way to resolve this issue such that users are not having to click on "Ready only" every time they want to open multiple instances of Excel inside Caseware? (This does not happen outside of Caseware).

Thanks.

From further use of the macros in PERSONAL.XLSB, it is not caseware specific. Essentially, anytime you open a separate instance of the Excel, the message error message pops up.

Thanks for your message. Unfortunately, the IsAddin property does not save and so the error message continues to pop up. In addition, anytime a new excel workbook is opened, it opens the personal.xlsb (because the file is in XLSTART) rather than book.xlsx.

I'm not sure if I am doing this correctly because it does not seem to work. This is what I am doing:

In Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window:
1. Click on "ThisWorkbook" under "VBAProject (PERSONAL.XLSB)" in Project - VBAProject in left pane
2. Navigate to "IsAddin" in Properties - ThisWorkbook in left pane and change it to True
3. Created a new module (macro) and inserted your code above into it
4. Run the macro in 3. above

I close down the excel workbook (the only workbook open), open a new workbook and then its VBA window and find the isAddin property reset back to False.

No. I only have 1 instance of excel open where I set the isAddin property and try to save it. It does not seem to stick.

I don't think I can, I am not sure if there is any confidential information associated with it since this is an office setting.
Do you have any other suggestions on what I can look for and change?

I ran the code and it changed the isAddin property to true. BUT when I restarted excel, the property was set to 'false' again.

I also ran the code on open workbook, which changed the setting on the first instance of excel that opened but a second instance of excel yielded the same error message as before.

Somehow it is not sticking.

Are you able to download this file?

Thanks for letting me know. It seems as though there is no quick fix for this. We wanted to keep things simple because there are so many add-ins from other sources that we did not want to create conflicts or other issues. Excel is used a lot for working on already prepared excel workbooks and to create new excel workbooks and so creating a separate excel workbook is probably not the most practical for the office. If you have any other thoughts, please do let me know. Thanks again.

Sounds like it, but unfortunately we need to use Excel 2010. Thank you for your help. Do I need to mark this thread as solved to close it off?

Thanks. We need excel to function as Excel 2010 (i.e. saving workbooks as .xlsx) and anytime you load a new or existing excel workbook (whether .xls, .xlsx, or rarely .xlsm) it will load as you would normally see in Excel 2010. It seems here that you have to load the .xls file and then open new or existing workbooks from there.

The Personal.xls solution works. Thank you!