Excel 2003 - Oddly named duplicate files accumulating

[RRinTetons]

We have a directory structure on a server share where about 50 departments each have their budget spreadsheets. Each budget-responsible manager has access to the directories he or she budgets for, but not the others. We've noticed that the budget directories for each department are accumulating files named with a 8 character alpha-numeric string and no files extension. The files are actually incremental copies of the spreadsheet, they can be opened with Excel and work just fine.

Change tracking is NOT turned on.

The files seem innocuous, but they are bothering the users and I don't know what they are, so they make me a bit nervous, too. It would be a real PITA if something corrupted all that work!

Anybody got an idea what those files are and where they come from?

-
Richard Ray
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

 

[GlennUK]

Those files come from temporary files that Excel uses, and they usually get left behind when Excel crashes, or the users machine locks/crashes/loses power.

It's rather worrying that they are accumulating like that ... are your users trained to power off their machines whilst in the middle of editing Excel workbooks, or something equally daft??? ( I once had a user that would take the floppy out in the middle of the copying to look and see if it was OK )

Cheers, Glenn.

Did you hear about the literalist show-jumper? He broke his nose jumping against the clock.

 

[AnotherHiggins]

At least some of the users don't have access to modify/delete for their folders.

As Glenn said, Excel creates those temp files, but they are generally deleted automatically. If the Excel user doesn't have the proper rights to the folder, they just accumulate.

Change the extension on a few of them to .xls and check properties to see who created them.

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[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]
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[RRinTetons]

Aha. So if the user doesn't have Delete permission on the directory, then Excel doesn't have it, so the files accumulate? I wonder if there's a way to give Excel permission to maintain its temp files without allowing the user to delete the main file?

-
Richard Ray
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

 

[AnotherHiggins]

I'm pretty sure there's not.

You could have a routine set up on the computer of a user who does[/u] have delete access (an admin, if needed) to periodically search through the folders and delete any .tmp files.

[tt]_____
[blue]-John[/blue][/tt]
[tab][red]The plural of anecdote is not data[/red]

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