excel novice

[eternallyme]

Hello all
I'm new to the Forum and kind of new to excel so please bear with me if i don't explain myself very well. Although reasonably computer literate I'm a bit out of my depth with a planning tool that I have set up at work.

Basically we need to work on it as 'live' document but also have it protected from being corrupted/ messed around with too much. We have locked the documents and then added protection to some of them - for some reason the one's that have the protection on them seem to be 'crashing'. There also seems to be a problem with some data not saving when updated. (there is minimal formatting on document and the data is basic).
I suppose my main question is, is there anyway of having a system of Excel documents that can be accessed by individuals easily, updated as required and sorted via different column headings depending on what data we want.
All advise welcomed!

Thanks
Deb

 

[Taul]

I suppose my main question is, is there anyway of having a system of Excel documents that can be accessed by individuals easily, updated as required and sorted via different column headings depending on what data we want.

Yes.
The best way (as far as I know) is to put the file on a network drive and allow anyone with access to the network open the file. The flaw with this approach is that only one person can access the file at a time. If the file is already open by another user, there will be a message on screen that says you can only open the file in "read only" mode. Basically, you have to wait until the other user has finished before you open the file.
Excel does allow file sharing but it is prone to errors
Is this what you envisaged?

As far as sorting a column is concerned, you can use the sort function or add some code from the macro recorder and assign it to a command button above each column that you want to sort.

Can you offer some more detail of your data layout?

 

[njimack]

Excel files can be 'shared' so that they can be accessed in write mode by more than one user at a time (in Excel 2010 this is on the Review tab. In 2003 and earlier, I think it's in the Tools menu).

However, a number of functions aren't supported in shared workbooks, although sorting data should still be supported.

Also, you run the risk of 2 or more users trying to edit the same cell at the same time. One of the users will be notified of this but this still carries the risk that some data will be lost.