Prevent multiple users from editing Excel at the same time

[Jaime Ong-Yeoh]

I’m trying to allow people to make appointment bookings online (and view which slots are available) but don’t have Microsoft Bookings enabled yet. The best I can think of is sharing an Excel workbook online, but I’d need to prevent multiple users from editing at the same time so they don’t overwrite each other’s appointments. How do i do this, or can anyone suggest a better way?

[#2]

Will you share a edit link on a website or what do you have in mind?
I don’t think it will be a good solution either way!
I’ll think about it

[#3]

If it's not that urgent, Microsoft is currently looking into a similar feature that will be available for all Exchange Online users, but will probably take few months to be released. Otherwise, Bookings is a good alternative, or you can create a custom Form for people to fill in.

[#4]

Well when they open it at the same time you will be able to see if someone is making changes and where their cursor is. But, you can also require check out for files in a SharePoint library and share the file from there. This might cause a bit of confusion as well however.

Other questions as well thou. Who will be accessing this data, external users? If so that will axe the check out idea :).

[#5]

I read it like he wanted to publish this online aka external anonymous users..
Check out is not an option here and also nothing prohibits people from erasing someone’s time and enter their preferred time instead! Overall it’s not a good solution...
Forms won’t let the people see other people’s booking times..
Bookings would be ideal here but I can’t really think of something else within Office 365 that would fit well

[#6]

I was thinking of putting the Excel file on SharePoint and sharing an edit link. I tested it with a few people and it seemed to work at first (user opened it with Excel i think, and received notification that the file was locked for editing by me), but did not work with others (user opened with Excel Online and was able to edit it).

[#7]

The audience is internal users.

Yeah the problem with Forms is people won't be able to see slots that are already booked.

It's quite a large event with 4 simultaneous streams and I really would like to avoid lots of people emailing me individually, either to book slots or to report Excel issues 😞

[#8]

WAIT, I THINK I'VE FIGURED IT OUT! Not using Excel, but via Planner. Each bucket is a stream (I have 4 simultaneous meeting streams), each task within a bucket is a time slot, and participants can assign a task (timeslot) to themselves.

What do you think?

[#9]

OK, if it's internal users i would probably just share the excel file and co-edit..People can see where others edit at the moment..It depends on your environment also..If you get problems with locked files and so on I would just go for the planner idea! 🙂

/ Adam

[#10]

Agree with Adam. Excel online for everyone or even the client you can coauth is the same result as using planner. But if it works for you roll with it.