Number of simultaneous users?

Hi,

I want to share an Excel 2003 spreadsheet with 4,500 users. The users open the spreadsheet, enter their user id and get some information. I expect that this will be a one-time operation and lasts a few minutes per user. My plan is to save the spreadsheet as a template and share on a network drive.

Does anyone know if there is a max on simultaneous users in Excel?

Thanks

hth123

I am not sure what the actual number is, but most people in the know will say 2 is too many.

Excel is not a sharing application (It will become much better with Excel Services as years go on)

I would suggest that you put up a very simple web page with an Access, SQL, mySQL, any back end. It would be as simple as an Excel application and thousands of times more reliable.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Anyone disagree?

Nick,

I agree with your point on sharing Excel workbooks, and the suggested solution sounds like a good one (though I, personally, wouldn't know how to go about linking a webpage to an Access database).

However hth123's suggestion of having the file saved as a (read-only?) template on the network drive would suggest that each user would infact be opening up a new 'copy' of the file, and then be saving it separately, presumably locally.

Would your concerns still be relevant with this usage?

Rick

Rick

It's tough to tell whether this would be one template opened and saved multiple times or a model to be opened multiple times, have data entry and clse as a single model.

I would say the latter is almost impossible and the former would be problematical with that many users.

It might even be, if this is a one-off that the OP finds a hosted data collection solution, it would only be a small amount of money in comparison to the cost of setting this up and if it is a regular thing than setting up a database and front end would certainly be my preferred option.

Hi all,  

Thanks for your replies. I realise that my template could be a bit risky performance wise so I will consider your suggestions.