XL2000: "This File Has Been Locked" Error Message Saving Shared Workbook

When you save a shared workbook, you may receive one of the following error messages. where user name is the name of another user who has the file open for editing.

-or- where numchar is a combination of numbers and characters such as 0ae06000 and filename is the name of the file you are saving, such as Book1.xls.

NOTE: Microsoft Office 2000 has built-in functionality that allows you to get more information about difficult-to-troubleshoot alerts or error messages. If you want to enable this functionality for this and other error messages in Microsoft Office 2000, please download the Microsoft Office 2000 Customizable Alerts file from the Microsoft Office Update Web site at the following address: NOTE: If you reached this article by clicking the Web Info button in an error message, you already have Customizable Alerts enabled.

This behavior occurs when you save a shared workbook while another user is also saving the same file. This behavior occurs because the workbook is locked during the save process and cannot be saved by another user until the save process is complete.

To work around this behavior, wait a few minutes (depending on the size of the file) until the save process is complete, and then try saving the file again.

This error message may appear when you save a file immediately after another user saves the same file. When you save an Excel workbook file, the following process occurs:

• The original file (for example, Book1.xls) is locked.
• The original file is saved to a temporary file (0ae06000).
• The original file (Book1.xls) is unlocked.
• The original file (Book1.xls) is deleted.
• The temporary file (0ae06000) is renamed to the original file name (Book1.xls).

If you save a shared workbook while it is being saved by another user, you receive the error message described in the "Symptoms" section in this article. This problem occurs when your save process begins after the file is deleted and before it is renamed (by the first save process) or when the save process you initiated locks the file after it is unlocked (by the first save process). It is unlikely that you will receive the second error message; it appears only in the case when two save processes for one file begin almost at the same moment.