File ‘already open’—NOT (Office 97)

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I have at least two teachers having this problem with Word and Excel problems. They open any of their old files and the computer pops up a dialogue box saying that the file is already being used by them and asking them if they want to make a copy. Of course, they AREN’T already using the file in question. They just click cancel and they can still save changes, etc. as they normally would.

This just started happening at the beginning of this school year. The only thing I can think of that might have something to do with it is that I uninstalled Office from their computers during the summer, installed Star Office, then un-installed Star Office and re-installed Office 97.

Any ideas as to what might be causing this?

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Just found out what was causing the problem (although not a solution):

They originally had Office 97 Professional on their computers. When I uninstalled that, I put on Office 97 Small Business Edition. With SBE version installed, we got the ‘file in use’ errors. When I uninstalled that version and re-installed Office 97 Professional, the errors went away.

We don’t have an official license for 97 Pro for these machines, so I need to put SBE back on and somehow prevent the ”file in use’ error from coming up. Any help out there?

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Just found out what was causing the problem (although not a solution):

They originally had Office 97 Professional on their computers. When I uninstalled that, I put on Office 97 Small Business Edition. With SBE version installed, we got the ‘file in use’ errors. When I uninstalled that version and re-installed Office 97 Professional, the errors went away.

We don’t have an official license for 97 Pro for these machines, so I need to put SBE back on and somehow prevent the ”file in use’ error from coming up. Any help out there?

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Does this occur when double-clicking in Windows Explorer, when using File>Open, or both? For Windows Explorer, does it matter whether Word already was open? Windows Explorer issues can be related to the File Types settings, so if it’s Windows Explorer, take a look at the Tools>Folder Options…>File Types entries for DOC>Open and XLS>Open on computers with and without problems.

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Hopefully this is now a moot point. I uninstalled it and re-installed it and now it appears to be working. Here is some more info if you’re interested:

If Word was already open, double-clicking a file from Explorer would allow it to open as it should. Using File | Open from within Word always worked. But when double-clicking a file in Explorer when Word was NOT open caused the problem.

I checked the File Types entries on 2 different computers–one that works and one that doesn’t (although the one that works was Office Pro and the one that didn’t was Office Small Business Edition). The only difference I could see was that at the end of the ‘Open’ listing, the one that worked ended with ‘/n’ and the one that didn’t work ended with ‘%1’. When I edited this line to add the ‘/n’, I got a ‘Word cannot open the document’ error, then a ‘the name or path is not valid’ error, but the file did open after that.

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With your applications closed, you should also go through & delete your temp files. See the first step in post 197827.
Cheers,

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With your applications closed, you should also go through & delete your temp files. See the first step in post 197827.
Cheers,

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%1 is a variable that is replaced at execution by the file pathname. /n is a switch that, if I remember correctly, starts Word without creating a new blank document. It sounds to me like the command line ending in %1 is the correct one.

I ran into a similar problem with the Thunderbird email client-clicking on a mailto link while T-bird was closed worked properly (opened a Compose window). Click on the link while T-bird was open & it didn’t work. Ended up uninstalling & reinstalling T-bird. Checked the entries before & after & couldn’t see any difference-but now it works & it didn’t before.

My guess is that there’s another entry, somewhere, that got changed during the reinstall-but I don’t know what it is.

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I’ve posted this picture before (but can’t find it now ). My settings on Word 2000 (which I believe were the same as 97) are like the attachment.

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Hopefully this is now a moot point. I uninstalled it and re-installed it and now it appears to be working. Here is some more info if you’re interested:

If Word was already open, double-clicking a file from Explorer would allow it to open as it should. Using File | Open from within Word always worked. But when double-clicking a file in Explorer when Word was NOT open caused the problem.

I checked the File Types entries on 2 different computers–one that works and one that doesn’t (although the one that works was Office Pro and the one that didn’t was Office Small Business Edition). The only difference I could see was that at the end of the ‘Open’ listing, the one that worked ended with ‘/n’ and the one that didn’t work ended with ‘%1’. When I edited this line to add the ‘/n’, I got a ‘Word cannot open the document’ error, then a ‘the name or path is not valid’ error, but the file did open after that.

Reply | Quote

Does this occur when double-clicking in Windows Explorer, when using File>Open, or both? For Windows Explorer, does it matter whether Word already was open? Windows Explorer issues can be related to the File Types settings, so if it’s Windows Explorer, take a look at the Tools>Folder Options…>File Types entries for DOC>Open and XLS>Open on computers with and without problems.

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