Question

I have an application written in VB6 that writes data to a spreadsheet. I’m using the MS Excel 11.0 Object library to create an instance of Excel and open the book:

Dim xlApp As Excel.Application, remoteBook As Workbook
Set xlApp = New Excel.Application
Set remoteBook = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(sheetName)

In addition to writing to the workbook “sheetName”, the program also allows the user to launch the workbook in order to view the cumulative results.

There is a chance, however slim it may be, that a user could have the workbook open for viewing the results while someone else is trying to write to it. I want to give the user writing to the sheet priority. Is there a way I can launch the sheet for viewing as read-only? There is a read-only property of the excel application object, but it is (of course) read-only.

How can I set up my program to write data to the workbook even if someone has accidentally left the file open at their desk?

Answer 1

Simply do this:

Set remoteBook = xlApp.Workbooks.Open( sheetName, , true)

Where true is whether or not to open as Read Only. ReadOnly is the third parameter to this method.