Hi . Didnt know whether did i post it in the correct section . sorry if i have post it in the wrong section

i need some help to about this problem . I have an Excel Sheet that we use to track project progress. This sheet is open almost around the clock as people are constantly entering information into this sheet.



I then have a PowerPoint presentation which links to this Excel file and grabs some details from it and then displays this PowerPoint on loop in our work area.

I have it set up such that the links automatically update everytime the presentation loops back to the first slide. THE PROBLEM IS...because the excel sheet is open, when the PowerPoint attempts to grab information from the excel sheet it pops up a message telling me that the Excel sheet is open (by someone on my team entering progress results), and that I have to click "Read-Only" or "Notify" or "Cancel". If I click "Read-Only", the data does update properly. HOWEVER, I just want it to ALWAYS open the excel file in Read-Only when grabbing the data so that this spreadsheet can loop continuously without me having to ever touch the presentation.

I'm thinking I may have to write some VB to make this happen. But even any guidance you could give me on that would be extremely helpful.

Any advice?

I might be wrong but I think you can write one little script in PPT saying

This should update that parameter until the presentation is closed.

Let me know if that works.