Excel files locked by AutoCAD, have to restart computer to clear them

[David125]

We use the PASTESPEC command to utilize excel in our AutoCAD drawings. Our goal is to have that “live” link between Excel and AutoCAD.

A problem occurs when someone opens a linked Excel file while the host cad file is open. The user will get the “file in use” message and cannot open the Excel file for editing. Closing the linked AutoCAD file or closing AutoCAD altogether doesn’t help. The only way to “clear” the excel file is to restart the computer that had the host AutoCAD file open when the attempt was made to access the Excel file.

I first noticed this happening about a couple of months ago, I don’t if it’s because of updates in Excel or AutoCAD.

[pendean]

Have you tried using Datalink to connect your spreadsheets to the drawings instead?

Your AutoCAD version as listed in ABOUT command is...?
And Excel version is...?
OS?
Server based files, or cloud based files (Excel and DWG)?

[David125]

Haven't tried that one, we've been using pastespec for years without any issue. I tried to get folks to use datalink a while back but pastespec was so much easier. I'll have to revisit datalink.

[David125]

Unfortunately, Datalink is incompatible with our spreadsheets. They are pretty complex and vary in formatting, it doesn't translate to tables on AutoCAD very well.

[JTBWorld]

After closing AutoCAD, open Windows Task Manager and go to the Details tab and see if acad.exe is still running. If so end the task and see if that helps. You can also check if Excel is fully closed this way. 

[RobDraw]

Maybe it it's the clipboard that's causing this. Try putting something else on the clipboard or clear the contents if you know how.

[jim]

Any other suggestions to resolve this issue?  It seems to have started in the past few months, but only sporadically.  It has gotten worse in the past few weeks.

In some cases we have seen a machine have 20+ open spreadsheets that seem to be "hidden" - in other words, the use doesn't have excel running, but when attempting to shutdown their machine, they get a notification that excel is preventing them from restarting so they are prompted to save or not save all of the "open" files.

This even happens when someone opens a drawing that has an overlay xref to another drawing where the OLE objects (spreadsheet) reside.  In other words, we are not opening the drawing with the spreadsheet link, only a drawing that references it.

[David125]

For us, it seems that the computer that tries to open a referenced excel file will lock it out by launching excel in the background. The only way we've been able to clear it up is end the session on the offending computer with the task manager. It would be nice figure out a way to prevent excel from launching this session at all.

[jim]

This is a frustrating issue and is starting to impact productivity.  Seems others have had this problem in the past.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-forum/user-still-has-excel-open-even-after-autocad-drawing-is...

I'm prone to thinking this may have something to do with Office 365 and possibly folks using either different versions of AutoCAD (i.e. 2019, 2020, 2021), or in some cases, not having all the updates installed.

Having to restart computers, or terminate apps in task manager is not a suitable solution. 

[g_ashworth]

I have recently had this issue and discovered that there is an instance of Excel running in Task Manager. I ended the Excel instance and it clears the lock.

[jim]

We have seen this work most times, but not all times. A few times it has required a complete shutdown of the station to release the files.

[MSchille-1994]

I've experienced the same.  The dynamic OLE table is so much quicker to insert.

[jim · Accepted solution]

We recently seemed to have resolved this problem by changing an option in AutoCad.
In the options dialogue, go to the Open and Save tab and check to see the setting in the section called "External References (Xrefs)".
Most of our workstations were set to "Disabled". I was told by a 3rd party support person that the default for this should be Enabled with copy. Not sure how this was changed on several random machines, but since we've set them all to "Enabled with copy", we don't seem to be having the trouble with excel any longer.
Give it a try. It doesn't seem to have affected our workflow in any noticeable way, other than we don't have sheets locked up by other users, which was chaotic.
Good luck and let me know if it helps - it will be helpful as a correlation.
-Jim

[David125]

Excel still runs in the background and I'm still going to have people yelling at me for that but that's another issue.

That works great for Autocad, thanks! 

[gadams]

If you are using Bluebeam REVU, this issue is caused by their OFFICE plugin.

Select the link below for AutoDesk Solution.

I have submitted this to Bluebeam to see if their programmers can fix the issue.

Linked-Excel-files-become-locked-read-only-after-closing-AutoCAD 

[jim]

Agreed - we have been disabling the plug in for quite a while now. You also have to disable again after updating bluebeam.

[gadams]

Yes, we recently discovered this after a Bluebeam update, we started having the problem again and realized that the OFFICE plugin checkbox is checked by default after an update.