Sharepoint Excel - Cannot Merge Changes Issue

Question

Hello,

My team utilizes SharePoint to store an excel tracking file that we all make updates to frequently. Recently, we have been prompted with error messages stating "We cannot merge with changes made by someone else" and giving the option to either save down a copy or discard our changes. All users utilize the option to work in the sheet in the desktop version as opposed to editing on the online site.

From some testing, we've found that this error message will commonly pop up when someone edits a field that is filtered out for another user (if they have selected "See just mine" when prompted to choose if they want to see sorting and filtering from others).

For the time being, we have tried to avoid selecting "See just mine" when filtering, but are looking for additional information to determine what kind of changes will prompt these save issues.

Answer 1

Dear Dominic Piazza,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

As per your description, please don’t worry, we can work together to narrow down and resolve the situation.

Normally the changes of the shared files are tracked and would be updated automatically, assuming all users are editing the file in a platform that supports the co-authoring feature.

Regarding the error you encountered, based on my understanding, an another possible cause could be that someone else might be editing the file in a version of Office that some Excel feature doesn't support co-authoring and this can stop the co-authoring process temporarily. In this scenario, please make users all users using the same Excel version.

Refer to this article: Collaborate on Excel workbooks at the same time with co-authoring, there are many possible cause for a sync conflict, generally, it can be:

Multiple people are making a change to the same thing.  This will sometimes cause conflict. My experience is, for example, when multiple users editing the same sheet but use filter/sort/custom view.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely, 

Waqas Muhammad