We have several workbooks on the network that we have setup as shared workbooks. We share these between 2 Windows 2000 computers and 2 Win98 computers. Constantly one of the Win98 machines and one of the Win2000 machines get IPF errors opening the shared workbooks. THere is no consistancy though. One day she can open it and work, 2 hours later she can't. We close it, unshare the workbook, reshare it and then she can use it again. Then the whole process starts over. Why is it happening and only on 2 computers? We have deleted the xla files, xlb files. No resolution. Is there something better besides Excel that we can use to share workbooks (like Lotus...is it any better???) More importantly, how can this be fixed. I would love to hear some input. THanks Andrew

Are the files on a server? If so, after a user has closed the file on their computer, go look to see what the status of the file is on the server. My guess is that it will show as still in use by that user. I saw this sometime ago and I don't recall that we ever found a fix but there might be one by now. Check the MS knowledge base.

I have looked at the KB and found nothing about this error. They users have the latest updates for office 2000 and updates for their OS. Next time I am onsite I will check the server for the file status. Any more input?

For years we have had issues with MS and ACCESS with multiple users updating the database during the day. Lots of corruption. My view is that if MS can't get it right with MS Access, how are they going to get it right with Excel? We never use MS ACCESS for multiple user databases, only as a front-end tool to get to SQL databases.