Excel temporary file attribute not set

Question

As described in the Microsoft support article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814068

Excel creates a temporary file when saving a spreadsheet. This file exists for varying lengths of time dependent upon the size of the file and how quickly the save process can complete…

When Excel is used in conjunction with some cloud applications, the cloud application will sync the file to the cloud server and all the other cloud's clients. This seems to cause all sorts of problems and also consistently creates remnant files that litter the folders where the original files reside. Messy!

My clients have been experiencing this problem a great deal with Synology's Cloud Station application and Excel's save methodology.

I have been in communication with Synology’s software developers to resolve this issue. They have been very helpful and are even including an update in their latest version release to deal with temporary files.

Their new methodology for dealing with temporary files is for the application to check the files attributes for “FILE_ATTRIBUTE_TEMPORARY” to be set.

Great!

Except…

I have checked the remnant files attributes using Fsutil with the syntax

fsutil usn readdata c:\path\filename

The attribute is not set!

This means even when the new Synology cloud station update is released, it still will not work with these files.

Do the Office developers have a reason to not set the file’s attributes to indicate the file as temporary?

I really don’t know enough about software development to know if this is an oversight or by design but it seems to me that the attribute should be set… It surely makes sense.

What I would like to do is communicate this issue to the Office developers in the hopes of a resolution or an explanation but it seems I can’t even find a way to do that.

I have searched through many forums looking for answers and it appears I am not the only one with this issue. I also know there are other resolutions that cloud sync apps have incorporated. For example a 60 second delay but that does not seem ideal to me.

Can anyone assist?

Answer 1

The cloud application I am using has a local folder which Excel see's as a local folder. As far as I know, Excel is unaware of it being a cloud.

Is there settings within Excel or Office to force Excel to regard it as a cloud and therefore use a different save method?

Or are you talking about the share workbook function in Excel which is something different altogether?

Perhaps what you suggest is the case "as far as you know", only applies to Microsoft's own cloud OneDrive or saving over a network.

Anyway my questions still stand, if you or anyone can help.

Do the Office developers have a reason to not set the file’s attributes to indicate the file as temporary?

How do I go about communicating my problem directly to the Excel developers? 

All that is needed is for the temporary file to have its attribute set to "FILE_ATTRIBUTE_TEMPORARY"

whilst it is in existence so that the cloud app knows to ignore it.

Answer 2

The article applies when you working with Excel files stored locally, as far as I know this is not applicable when working over cloud.

When you work on cloud integration the file is saved simultaneously when you are editing/entering the data.

Said that we need to wait if someone else has any workaround or any suggestions on this.