#1
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Is co-authoring possible in tables?
My work from home is to prepare a template (table) for co-authoring in Microsoft 365 with lots of formula and conditional formatting. I've read somewhere that Excel tables cannot be shared. We need to work together in an Excel table not regular data sheet. Is this possible?
Thank you. |
#2
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I may have misunderstood you, but it sounds like the same thing I'm doing with an overseas client; they want to be able to update their workbook with fresh data, but they also want me to be able to add VBA code to it.
The obvious way to do that is to have some sort of SharePoint or SharePoint-like arrangement. With SharePoint you have the file in a common location, and if anyone opens it SharePoint marks it as "checked out" to that user; others can look at it, but cannot update it until the other user checks it back in. In my case the client is unwilling to give me access to their SharePoint space, so we make do with a workaround: They send me the latest copy, upon which I announce to them that I have it "checked out" and they must remember not to update their copy until I send them my updates, at which point it's back in their hands again. Not entirely satisfactory, but it seems to work, mostly (I think) because they don't have to update their stuff constantly. If they did, it would be much harder. To reduce confusion, I'm careful about filenames. When I send them a copy, I name it "name yyyy-mm-dd.xlsm" so there's no doubt about which version is which. |
#3
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Thank you Bob. It is quite a lag waiting on a fellow user to input his updates. We are waiting for the completion of a satellite internet service before we could put to test working/co-authoring the template in an Excel table format.
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#4
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My first reaction, here, is that the lag isn't going to be any less if you do something in SharePoint; if someone else checks it out, it's still unusable (well, unupdatable) until the other user checks it back in.
If what you want is really for two people to be able to update a worksheet at the same time, I was going to say there's no way to do that. The first contradiction that occurs to me is to put the data in Access instead of Excel—or in some other database tool, like Oracle or Focus or DB2. Of course, that's probably more trouble than you want to go to. But come to think of it, I guess there's another way. If you have an agreement that you'll update some data and keep your cotton-picking hands off other locations in the workbook—if everyone has designated areas of responsibility, and you trust each other not to cross boundaries (or at least not very often)—I imagine you can each put your data in a worksheet of your very own, and construct another workbook that assembles the data. To keep it simple, maybe you're going to update only row 1, and your partner only row 2, and the rest of the worksheet calculates values from those two rows. You keep a workbook on your machine (name it Row1.xlsx), and your partner has another workbook (Row2.xlsx). Then, in the main workbook (Main.xlsx), rows 1 and 2 have formulae that read the data in your two workbooks. When anyone opens Main.xlsx, it'll ask them whether they want to update the links; the user answers Yes, and it pulls the latest data from Row1.xlsx and Row2.xlsx. |
#5
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Almost like Bob described, some years ago I designed an Excel solution for technologists, where every technologist had his/her own workbook, where info about production orders given him/her was entered, and head of department had his own (main) workbook, where registers of technologists and work orders, etc. were maintained. Technologists workbooks read registers (into hidden sheets) from main workbook using ODBC connections, and main workbook read production orders info from technologists workbooks into specified ranges of it's own hidden sheet using linked formulas. And the main workbook consolidated then all production orders info into separate table using an ODBC query with hidden sheet as source. And finally, the main workbook had various report sheets for department head to use.
The main condition for such design to work is, every user edits only his/her own data (technologists can enter appointed work order details, but can't register new orders, or new technologists, or enter any info for orders appointed for other technologists, and department head can register new technologists, or new work orders, etc., and appoint orders to technologists, but can't enter any order details) - all other data is read-only. |
#6
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Thank you Bob and Arvi for the ideas that may come useful along the way.
Each user is assigned specific rows to work on month on month. Rows may be inserted as needed by a user. The works of each user are extracted through power query. |
#7
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We finally tested working together in a shared workbook with the dataset in an Excel table and found out that yes, simultaneous and real time editing or co-authoring is possible in tables.
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