Collaborative Editing does not work for Excel in SharePoint on-prem

Question

We have issues on our SharePoint 2019 on-premises with collaborative editing on Excel files. While this feature works fine with Word or PowerPoint, it doesn't work at all with Excel. Any idea why?
Obviously permissions and library settings (versioning, checkout) are ok, because as I said, Word and PPT from same location do work. And also it does nto work in different libraries on the SharePoint server....

What happens is, if one opens an Excel, no matter which one - can be a brand new empty one, he always gets this yellow ribbon saying that the file was opened from server in read-only mode, do you want to edit (for this I also had posted a questions long time ago, never got an answer https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/54438/read-only-we-opened-this-workbook-read-only-from-t.html). Now a second user opens the same file, same procedure and the first one who clicks "ant to edit" is fine, the next one gets this old-fashioned popup saying that someone else is editing the file, do you want to open a write-protected copy.... the message we all know from regular file shares.

If we do the same on SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business, firstly we do not get this file opened in read-only - do you want to edit ribbon waring, and also secondly collaborative editing works. All paths in charge, SharePoint on-prem, SharePoint online or OneDrive are added as trusted saving places in Excel 8actually in all office apps - via GPO).

So I have two issues basically:

1. why does only Excel files open from SP on-prem (and only from there) always read-only and need to activate editing? This is a bit annoying, but not a critical thing by itself.
2. does the above interfere with collaborative editing feature on SP on-prem? If no, what else can be a reason not to be able to use this feature particularly only on Excel files.

Any hints are highly appreciated

thanks in advance and kind regards,
Dieter

Answer 1

Hi @Anonymous ,

Long time no see, how are you?

As per the article: Document collaboration and co-authoring

Word and PowerPoint on all devices and versions more recent than Office 2010 support co-authoring. The Excel mobile apps and the latest version of Excel for Microsoft 365 also support co-authoring

But it contains some limitations like, users can co-author in Excel Web App only if everyone uses the Excel Web App to access the workbook. If anyone uses Excel (the client application) to access the workbook, co-authoring in Excel Web App will be disabled for that workbook while it is open in the client application.

And another limitation is Excel client application does not support co-authoring workbooks in SharePoint Server. The Excel client application uses the Shared Workbook feature to support non-real-time co-authoring workbooks that are stored locally or on network (UNC) paths. Co-authoring workbooks in SharePoint is supported by using the Excel Web App.

For more reference, you can refer to the below articles:

• Overview of co-authoring in SharePoint Server
• Troubleshoot co-authoring in Office

Thanks,
Echo Du

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Answer 2

In the meantime I found this thread https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/ie/en-US/ed584e9c-0086-44fb-98e3-64f9b5f3f434/sharepoint-2016-onpremises-realtime-coauthoring?forum=SP2016 which relates to SharePoint 2016, but I feel like the statements are still valid.

Word and PowerPoint support co-authoring with SharePoint 2016. Excel doesn't support co-authoring with SharePoint 2016.

or

Hi Jeremy, the Office clients and servers/services support different levels of coauthoring. SharePoint Server supports basic coauthoring where multiple people can view and edit the same Word and PowerPoint document at the same time, but you don't see each other's character-by-character updates in real-time. You'll see indications that others have made changes to the document when they save their changes to the server, and you can sync down their updates as well as save your updates to the server. See https://technet.microsoft.com/library/ff718249.aspx for details.
The more advanced coauthoring functionality where you see each other's updates in real-time requires SharePoint Online.

This does all look familiar to me. And also MS deliberately uses the same or very similar naming for their products in cloud and on-prem (like Dynamics CRM 356 vs. Dynamics CRM 365 on-premises), and also it looks to me like they do want to make users believe that certain functions do fork online and eventually might work, most probably at a much lower level, on-prem as well.
Especially these similar names make it almost Impossible to get valid results with Google particularly for on-prem topics.

But I still do have hope that someone can give me some good advice and SharePoint 2019 on-prem does support co-editing, even if at a lower level then the online version.