Opening .XLS files, displays as ReadOnly

Question

Users need to Share .XLS files with external users

some users are not on latest excel so users use .XLS rather than .XLSX
Problem is these open as READ ONLY - is this NORNAL / Expected behaviour?

Users can edit the file but need additional clicks!

Some users have had issue with Opening the file in Excel and saving
sometime file does not save the updated version
One user added thosand of rows > saved
and found later the file had not saved! LOST a LOT of Work

other users have said when opened in Excel the files are weeks old !

Answer 1

Hi @Chris Stephens ，

Displaying read-only requires an extra click, probably because the file is in protected view. Exiting "protected view" can simply enable editing in the message bar, which is normal/expected behavior.

Per my test, using online co-editing should not fail to save, because the files edited in the browser are automatically saved by the system. According to your description, external users may edit shared files through ‘open in app’, which may cause upload failure due to multiple editing. I tried it and got a notification that the upload failed in the image below, which may be ignored by the user. So I recommend ‘open in browser’ to edit shared files with multiple people, which will reduce the failure of saving due to uploading.

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Answer 2

I notice the file is .xlsx & sharedonline for co-editing
This is not the use case

Unfortunatly, when I say SHARED - the files PHYSICALLY are emailed to various users (hence the use of .xls)
and users have various version of office and most users are OFF Line
(Data is collected in the field, in some cases quite literally)