Graphics

What is the preferred version of Excel for operating with XPression 9.5? We've got 6 XPression boxes all on build 5008 with corresponding Datalinq versions and I've had very mixed results in later versions of excel (some boxes are on Excel 365, some are on Excel 2016).  We seem to have a recurring file locking issue when using excel files with multiple user defined tables). Due to the nature of our projects we can't always work with Fixed Tables in Datalinq which seems to be the only solve. This issue seems to persist across Excel 2016 as well as Excel 365 and occurs in both XLSM and XLSX files (although possibly more frequently in XLSM files).  I've found that lowering the number of tables in a spreadsheet seems to help but it will lock with 4 or 5 tables which is below what we are looking to have in a sheet.  Any advice? 

Thanks!

I've generally seen this connection string work (in an ADODB DataLinq source) when file locking is an issue:

Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;
Data Source="EXCEL_FILE_HERE.xls";
Extended Properties="Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes;IMEX=1";

And make sure to save it as an old-style Excel sheet, so it ends up with a .xls file format, then (you might have to hunt around for this) look for Share Workbook (Legacy)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-happened-to-shared-workbooks-150fc205-990a-4763-82f1-6c259303fe05

I tried this, and while I was able to get it to connect properly it messed up a lot of header rows and erased data validation (part of the compatibility port back to the 2003 version) so this won't be a sustainable solution for us (but it did appear to fix the locking!). I also noticed we are using the 2010 version of Access Database Engine. Should we be on the 2016 version? Our excel is 64bit for what its worth.