Excel 2013 cell protection issue
Discussion
Also posted this on a LinkedIn group, but I thought I'd get a wider audience in here....
Apologies in advance for the lengthy post, but I thought I'd best give as much detail as I can.
For the last 15 years, I've been providing a small group of financial advisers with an Excel-based financial planning tool. It was originally written in Excel 97 and I've kept it up to speed with each new version (including the big changes for 2007 / 2010)
The system (which is called Clarity) has worked in Excel 2013 for the last couple of years, regardless of the O/S. However, three or four weeks ago, one (and ONLY one) of the worksheets is now opening with all the unprotected cells now protected. Entering the worksheet password doesn't even unprotect the sheet!
One of my subscribers has found that if he clicks around the worksheet quickly enough, it (very) occasionally allows an entry into a cell, but its hardly a solution!
On my "master" versions (I issue an xls and an xlsm version) the cells are unprotected. On any PC with Excel 2010 or earlier, the cells stay unprotected. Its just Office 2013 that seems to be arbitrarily applying protection (to the xls and xlsm versions), and even then, only to the one worksheet
I've even tried re-installing a version of Clarity from earlier this year (I issue monthly updates), but that is also affected, proving that its not something I've done, but something that has changed in Excel.
I've tried playing with most of the settings in Trust Centre, bit without any joy.
I currently have multiple, unrelated subscribers suffering the same issue, so its not a local PC problem.
I've been trying to get to the bottom of this for three weeks and having just spent two hours on a remote session for one of my subscribers, I'm on the verge of withdrawing support for Office 2013 users, which will clearly cost in terms of lost subscriptions.
Any thoughts?
Apologies in advance for the lengthy post, but I thought I'd best give as much detail as I can.
For the last 15 years, I've been providing a small group of financial advisers with an Excel-based financial planning tool. It was originally written in Excel 97 and I've kept it up to speed with each new version (including the big changes for 2007 / 2010)
The system (which is called Clarity) has worked in Excel 2013 for the last couple of years, regardless of the O/S. However, three or four weeks ago, one (and ONLY one) of the worksheets is now opening with all the unprotected cells now protected. Entering the worksheet password doesn't even unprotect the sheet!
One of my subscribers has found that if he clicks around the worksheet quickly enough, it (very) occasionally allows an entry into a cell, but its hardly a solution!
On my "master" versions (I issue an xls and an xlsm version) the cells are unprotected. On any PC with Excel 2010 or earlier, the cells stay unprotected. Its just Office 2013 that seems to be arbitrarily applying protection (to the xls and xlsm versions), and even then, only to the one worksheet
I've even tried re-installing a version of Clarity from earlier this year (I issue monthly updates), but that is also affected, proving that its not something I've done, but something that has changed in Excel.
I've tried playing with most of the settings in Trust Centre, bit without any joy.
I currently have multiple, unrelated subscribers suffering the same issue, so its not a local PC problem.
I've been trying to get to the bottom of this for three weeks and having just spent two hours on a remote session for one of my subscribers, I'm on the verge of withdrawing support for Office 2013 users, which will clearly cost in terms of lost subscriptions.
Any thoughts?
@ LordGrover - has to be .xlsm in Excel 2007 or later, as the system runs lots of Macros and VBA
@ maffski - wasn't aware of the £200 per fix option at Microsoft - if I don't get to a solution in the next few days, I'll go for it.
@ nickd01 - I issued an email to all users last night to see if all 2013 users are affected. I don't have very many users now, but of the ones I know that use 2013, all are affected (including the IT support guy for one of them where we set up Clarity on a brand new virtual PC, just to test the issues).
@ maffski - wasn't aware of the £200 per fix option at Microsoft - if I don't get to a solution in the next few days, I'll go for it.
@ nickd01 - I issued an email to all users last night to see if all 2013 users are affected. I don't have very many users now, but of the ones I know that use 2013, all are affected (including the IT support guy for one of them where we set up Clarity on a brand new virtual PC, just to test the issues).
I can't even un-protect the worksheet - Excel 2013 simply won't allow it - I tried multiple times while on the remote support session last night and another (more tech-savvy) user also tried it with no luck
Its as if Excel has detected something on the page that it really doesn't like and is trying to protect the user from it.
Amusingly, the page in question is for recording the details of lump-sum investments. The next page is near-identical and is for recording regular premium contracts. A few differences, obviously, but to a casual observer, they look highly similar and have very close functionality and graphs, links etc
Its as if Excel has detected something on the page that it really doesn't like and is trying to protect the user from it.
Amusingly, the page in question is for recording the details of lump-sum investments. The next page is near-identical and is for recording regular premium contracts. A few differences, obviously, but to a casual observer, they look highly similar and have very close functionality and graphs, links etc
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