Turning Off Sharing

Summary: When you no longer want to share a workbook with multiple users, you need to turn the sharing feature off. This tip explains the quickest way to again make a workbook a single-user document. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, and Excel 2003.)

At some point you may want to turn off workbook sharing in Excel. For instance, when the end of the development period for the workbook has been reached, you will want to turn off sharing and come up with your final version of the workbook.

You can turn off sharing by following these steps:

Choose Share Workbook from the Tools menu. Excel displays the Share Workbook dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)
Clear the Allow Changes check box.
Click on OK.

When you turn off sharing and click on the OK button, Excel displays a warning that what you are doing may have consequences for other users. Provided there are no other users accessing the workbook, you should go ahead and click on Yes. If there are other users (shown back in the Share Workbook dialog box), you may want to ask them to save their changes and close the workbook before proceeding.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2917) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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Turning Off Sharing