Excel Workbook has suddenly Stopped Saving Changes

Question

We have a group Excel workbook that a whole department works on. The settings are set to anyone who has the link and password can edit. There are several columns that have been set to protected that cannot be edited, so that no one accidentally deletes important information.

Everyone could work fine in this workbook until the last month or so. Now it is about a 50/50 chance that people will be able to edit 3-5 cells and will get an error notice that states; "Sorry your workbook cannot be saved. We created a separate workbook with the last changes we could save. You can download the file, and upload it later to overwrite the original, " and gives the option to Discard Changes or Download. We have double checked the settings to make sure they are accurate and they are. This is not happening every time someone works in the workbook, but it is happening often.

Suggestions on how I could fix this?

Answer 1

Dear Courtney Kruzan,

Good day!! Thanks for posting your concern in this Microsoft Community.

Per the description shared, I would like to summarize your concern i.e., a workbook which is protected with password, and it’s shared to other users who are able to edit after entering the password. However, the shared workbook is facing to the sync issue intermittently for some of the users.

If my understanding is correct, I would like to confirm whether the users are facing the same issue when they try to open the shared Excel via Excel app directly instead opening the file from the OneDrive sync client.

Moreover, can you please check whether all users Excel application is updated to the latest version? Open the Excel app> Account> Update Options> Update Now

At last, if there is any workbook with similar scenario, can I know whether the same problem persists?

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

Mia | Microsoft Moderator