Who Has the File Open?

Joe asked if there is a way to determine, in a macro, who has a particular workbook open. He thought about using the WriteReservedBy property, but it doesn't seem to have the information he needs.

Unfortunately, there is no way to determine this information from VBA—it just isn't accessible. The WriteReservedBy property doesn't show who has a file open; it shows who saved the workbook using a password. In other words, when someone saves a workbook with the option to have a password to modify it, the file is "WriteReserved." The WriteReservedBy property contains the name of the person that saved the file in the WriteReserved state.

If you only need to know the answer (about who has the file open) periodically, it is easiest to gather a list of the open file names, and ask the network admin to tell you who has them open—such information is maintained on the network and accessible to the admin.

Another potential solution is to add an AutoOpen macro to each workbook that writes a temporary file to disk that contains the name of the person opening the file. The macro would need to not only open the temporary file, but handle error conditions, such as a temporary file that is already open. The temporary file could then be accessed by other macros to see the name that it contains.

The macro found at the following site may provide another solution to finding out who has a particular workbook open:

https://bizintelsolutions.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/who-is-in-excel-xlsx-file/

An additional place that may hold an answer is the VBNet site. The article at this page contains code that may be adaptable for the desired information:

http://vbnet.mvps.org/index.html?code/network/netfileenum.htm

Note that the code works only in older versions of Windows. It should work just fine in versions up through Windows 7, but tread softly when it comes to later versions—you'll want to test it fully to ensure it works in your environment.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (9511) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Who Has the File Open?.