connecting excel to Cognos Impromptu to get hotfile

[doxilady]

I have a couple of questions regarding issues on connecting to an excel spreadsheet using an odbc connection.

Is it better to use a system, user or file dsn.
I also am running into a sharing problem. I have a spreadsheet on a shared drive that someone updates once a month. It appears that when I set up the odbc connection to it, it becomes read only so no one can open and save it.
Also, do I need to name each column I want to include or just a range?
Any help would be appreciated.

 

[drlex]

Shared files are a real maintenance problem; it would be better having an automated job or excel macro that copied the file to a 'safe' location to ensure no access issues arise.

soi la, soi carré