My Excel is Locking Up

Have you tried the Offcat..? Maybe an upgrade is in order...

Thanks, I sent that off to my IT department, I'm waiting to hear back if I'm allowed to try it. If so, I'm thinking I may need to do that to all 18 machines on the shop floor.

"Because each tab is machine specific, no 2 operators need to be on the same tab at the same time.

If I have 2 operators try to input data to the same field the file will lock up"

If they are on different tabs, they cannot both be on the same field. Therefore, what you have is an operator training problem.

If I have 2 operators trying to input data to the same field, it's the easiest fix there is. I can clear that in 2 sec. and be on my way.

My question is why is it locking up when I can't find the reason anywhere, or better yet, is there a way to prevent it from locking up at all.

Thanks in advance...

That sounds like a great idea, I'll have to read up on how to do that.

Thanks

I have solved a similar problem by having two Excel files open at once. For example, you have ThisMachineFile.xls and MasterFile.xls. Within the machine file you can refer to the master file using the syntax [MasterFile.xls]Sheet1!A2. The square brackets must enclose the full name of the file, including the suffix, the tab name is followed by the exclamation mark and the grid reference may be either a direct cell reference or a field name.
Any number of users can read from a single file, but it should be self-evident that the software will not allow two users to write to the same cell. In general I find that even two programs on the same computer will not write to the same open file.

It could be that you have hit a memory limit and an overflow flag is locking up your system. I suspect this because quite a few of the maximum parameter settings in Excel are limited to 32767. That just happens to be the number of seconds in 3.79 days which could be when your system does a self reset. If this is the cause splitting the file will solve the problem.

Excel files are notoriously big. Excel is a memory hog. It is possible you have exceeded your machine or servers memory limits. Windows OS can easily run out of memory because it leaves the most used programs partially loaded. It does this because for some strange reason people seem to think they should be able to just click a button and the information appear. (reality, computers don't really have that ability without tons of RAM) As for Excel,

Usually if you try to open a spread sheet that is already open by someone else it will tell you so and only allow a copy to be opened until the current user closes the original out. Any entries made on the copy will be retained on a file clearly marked copy when saved and not in the original spread sheet. If you are not careful you will have numerous copies in your system. This creates confusion and reduces your memory even further if there are more than one copy open along with the original.

Have you been having mysterious data losses? "hey I reported that!" "well its not in the system." kind of things?

Are other things running slow?" Glitchy? Sticking?

Have you looked at the Resource monitor program to see how the system is running?

Control panel/performance information and tools/advanced tools/Resource monitor

Its a start.

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use excel for interface not for interface and db (excel recalculates all dependent cells on changes = a waste of energy if not also time)

use something that formerly was MS Jet DB to handle db updates via SQL or alternate (just perhaps! to address the other* than user interface excel files (*update a bkp cpy.-s in cloud or other file server regularly))

e.c.