Hi everyone, this is a general question because I’m not sure exactly what is causing the problem. Sometimes I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle! 
This is Excel 97.
I setup an activity tracking application in Excel in which several users (about 30) each input their daily productivity into seperate workbooks (everyone has their own file named “AT [user_number].xls”). All of the files in this system are located in a single directory on the LAN (NT Server). On start-up, each workbook links to a central workbook called “User List.xls” that lists all the users. The links are simple VLOOKUPs that return the users’ names and wages, etc depending on their user number.
This always appeared to work fine (it has been in operation since August 2000) until about a month ago when LAN performance issues appear to have created some speed issues. Now, many times users will get the message “Unable to access User List.xls” when this linking occurs.
I was under the impression that when Excel opens a file to update links that this operation is read-only. If two people are trying to access the same file as read-only, why would either of them get a network error message like that? Or is this internal to Excel 97?
Has anyone had any experience with this type of error?
