Who really has this Office document on a NAS shared folder open?

Spencer

12/19/23, 3:15 PM

I've encountered this before, but this is the first time I decided to ask about it.

One of my managers (call them M) wanted to open an Excel document on a shared drive. Excel told them that user A already had it open for editing. User A was on vacation, so M assumed that A had simply left the file open and came to me to "force it closed". To do this, I used Computer Management MMC, and connected to the NAS Server to go into Shared Folders->Open Files and found that user B had it open instead.

Since this is an Excel document, when thefile.xlsx is open there is a temporary file ~$thefile.xlsx that tracks unsaved changes and AFAICT also serves as the lock against other users having it open for editing. Computer Management indicated User B had both files open, and there were no files on the NAS server open by user A.

I expect that it's user B that actually had the files open, presumably computer management reads the user's SID from the authentication token used to open the file. And of course B was not on vacation. So that's what I told M, who then emailed B to close it.

However I noticed that ~$thefile.xlsx's ACL listed user A as its owner.

Was it really B? Would that mean Excel uses an incorrect method to determine who has the file open?

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microsoft-excel

Appleoddity

12/20/23, 4:05 AM

This is a super common problem with sharing office files on a network. FYI, OneDrive / Teams / SharePoint is a far better way to do it now. The best I can explain it is that User A did generate the temp file. They didn’t close down properly or something and the file was left behind. Now, it’s always showing as open by User A, regardless of who has it open or if it is open at all. Delete the temp file and the problem is solved. I see these temp files with the `~$` all the time floating around. I delete them. They are not important. They do not track changes. It just contains a username.

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