Version of SharePoint: 2010Version of Excel: 2010
First off let me start by painting a wonderful picture. Imagine a world where you can launch Word and PowerPoint documents that exist within SharePoint and it is intelligent enough and helpful enough to prevent you from working on those said file types until you check them out, if the requirement to do so is set of course. Well such a world exists.
Then disaster strikes and in comes Excel. Excel decides to go against the grain and in the words of some secret agents, it goes dark, off the grid, just doing it’s own thing. Excel lets you work on it and could create a situation where you have made some changes and then realise you have not checked out the file. Now not really a problem just click on check out, it will check out with your changes and click check in. Now should you want to check it out again you will be presented with the options to save as, don’t save or cancel. I would expect this as it is now treating it like it is read only. If you do this for a second time and get the same save as prompt and click no. It will now say do you want to re-open, to which if you say no, Excel will still have your changes and also allow you to check it out again.
My head is starting to hurt at this point.
If you were to just launch excel, straight away click check out before making any changes, the first time all is well. Now the second time it will ask you to check out again after clicking on check out. The second clicking of check out it works.
I can reproduce this all the time with .XLS and thought this was the initial cause of the issue and I was ready to get on my stallion and charge in saying use .XLSX as I wouldn’t count .XLS as a supported file type as it has known issues. To which the crowds replied it happens also with .XLSX.
The plot thickens further this issue is not present in one environment but does exist in another. So the constants are that I can reproduce it in this one environment and these issues only affects Excel.
I appreciate that the method of working is questionable but it still doesn’t get away from the fact that there is some strange behaviour going on here.
The main thing I would like to know is if it is just me or has anyone got an environment where Excel does not allow you to edit until you have checked out the document?
The second thing is can anyone think of why the second time of checking out within Excel exhibits strange behaviour?
Many thanks in advance,
Henry
