Perhaps a simpler and less error-prone way of doing this is to have one workbook that gets updated from the database and, linked to that, another workbook (or a series of workbooks, one for each user) that can be used for viewing. That way, there's no risk of the workbook that has to be updated by the system being locked by a user who forgot to open it as read-only. With the linking workbook(s), the data links can be refreshed on demand.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I like it! Except for the Active-Directory suggestion, all the methods I thought of were, shall we say, risky—they might have failed through accidental non-cooperation of users. This is much better, I think. Sure, a user could still munge up the works by refusing to go along with the program, but it'd be a lot harder to do inadvertently.