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| Please check out<br>Excel file is locked for editing for the latest information on this topic. |
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I was working on an Excel file stored in Onedrive, using the Excel 2013 application (not the web application). My system locked up (unrelated to Excel or Onedrive) and I had to hard power cycle the PC to recover. Anyway, now upon opening the file in Excel it tells me the file is locked for editing by another user and the user is....me! How can I force the file handle lock to be removed so that I can get back to editing with Excel? I am not using the Onedrive application on my PC, I am interacting with the file directly via the Onedrive integration to Office 2013.
A family of Microsoft spreadsheet software with tools for analyzing, charting, and communicating data.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Answer accepted by question author
Hi! We've put together an article on Excel file lock behavior that we hope may be helpful.
Excel file is locked out for editing to another user
It's also always a great idea to check for updates and make sure you have the latest release.
Freya
Office Newsroom
It is shame how Microsoft hasn't been able to figure this out. Google sheets is way superior!!!!
Excel is joke when trying to share a file on the web. I hope Microsoft really puts a effort to catch up to Google sheets.
go to the Start menu, search for Upload Center. Next, go to the drop down where it says Pending Uploads and change it to All Cached Files and delete all the documents in the list. Then try opening up the file again.
That article doesn't address the issue. I'm saving a excel workbook to my desktop. While I have other excel files open, I attempt to open the new one, but it is locked by me - despite never having been opened by anyone. I have to completely close all workbooks, force excel to shut down on the task manager, then open everything back up, and then open the new file. Your article doesn't even touch on the issue - it is an idiots way around an excel bug/glitch that you are either too inept or lazy to fix, I don't have time to go through a hugely involved process to get into a spreadsheet that I should be able to open right away...... finding 5 minute work arounds is not the answer to a major software bug/glitch. When are you planning to fix this?
Thanks for the suggestion.
I'm on Win 10.
As Dave posted previously:
If I try to open an Excel file that is in any folder other than Desktop or Downloads or OS (C:), I get the error message: “[name of file] is locked for editing/By ‘another user’/[etc.]”
However if I move the Excel file to the Desktop it opens normally.
(When I open the Task Manager/Processes, there are no other Excel file running. When I go to C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Temp there is no owner file or “Power Query” (~$ . . .) there.
Thus to work on any Excel file, I have to move it to the Desktop.