Run Macro simultaneously from Sharepoint

Question

Hello All,

We have a Office 365 VBA Excel Macro Stored at a corporate Office 365 Sharepoint, that create a TXT file after a provided Excel file, its a simple run/close without saving procedure.

During the lapse of a week, each Month End close, thousands of users use it to generate these TXT files.

Because frequent required updates to the macro we need to ensure that users only use the latest version of it, So we are trying to force users to Only run it from the Sharepoint, not allowing them to download it.

• How many people could run the macro simultaneously?
• Could this decision affect users to not be able to use it during a given time ?

Regards,

Andres Vazquez

Answer 1

Hi Andres,

I understand your workbook is stored in SharePoint online, and you do not want users to download the workbook instead you want them to open in SharePoint to avoid multiple copies of the same workbook.

As the workbook contains macro, I believe the format is .xlsm, correct? In browser (Excel for the web), you can open and edit .xlsx, .xlsb format without any issue, but in the case of .xlsm, a workbook in this format can be opened but macros do not run in a browser window.

To run the macro, users need to open the said workbook in the desktop app. Users do not need to download the workbook, they simply can click Open in Desktop appon the ribbon****or sync the workbook to the local computer using the OneDrive sync client and then run the macro.

Regarding “How many people could run the macro simultaneously?”, running the macro will require editing the workbook (macros can’t run when the workbook is in read-only mode) on Excel desktop application and the feature where several users edit the workbook simultaneously is called Coauthoring. The recommended maximum number of concurrent editors per document is 10. However, the limit is 99 and when this number is exceeded, each subsequent user sees a “File in use” error and can only open a read-only copy of the document. More than 10 co-editors will lead to a gradually degraded user experience with more conflicts, and users might have to go through more iterations to successfully upload their changes to the server.

To co-author in Excel for Windows desktops, you need:

1. You need a Microsoft 365 subscription.
2. The latest version of Excel for Microsoft 365 on the computer.
3. You need to sign in to Office with your subscription account.
4. You need to use Excel Workbooks in .xlsx, .xlsm, or .xlsb file format.

For more information, see 

Collaborate on Excel workbooks at the same time with co-authoring

If you need any help, let me know.

Regards,

Neha

Answer 2

Hi Andres,

Thanks for replying.

Should you need any help with this issue, please feel free to post back.

Regards,

Neha

Answer 3

Thanks a lot Neha,

Yes, users should run the .xlsm from Desktop application instead of saving it to their respective computers, we all use corporate 365 office for it.

The reason we are trying to avoid this is because the version of the macro continues to be updated because it depends on a system series of tables.

The idea is that users only uses the latest updated one, intead of an older version they downloaded earlier, or from a copy of the macro passed to them by another team member.

These kind of issues leaded us to restrict the download of the file.

I will keep a look into the usage of the file, now knowing that 99 is the limit for users opening the file at the same time.

As mentioned, users are not expected to update the file in any way, is just a tool to help them build those .TXT files to process them somewere else.

Best regards,

Andres Vazquez