"Someone else is working in excel file right now. Please try again later" issue

[Kyle_Whitlock]

Hello, I am getting an error when writing into a cell in excel that is saying, “Someone else is working in ‘excel file’ right now. Please try again later”. But I have confirmed that nobody else is accessing the file, only the bot. This write cell activity is following another one that is working fine. Once this pop-up in excel appears, the error in Orchestrator is “Write Cell: The range does not exist”, but the range is B2 so it definitely exists.

The file is NOT in read-only mode and it is a fresh excel file that the bot is creating for the first time. As stated before, this issue is occuring after another write cell activity that is working fine.

I am using Excel Application Scope for these activities and the settings are AutoSave: Enabled and Visible: True. Would making Visible: False solve this issue? Or could this be related to something else?

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Anil_G (Anil Gorthi)]

@Kyle_Whitlock

1. Is the excel being used directly from a shared folder? if so please move it to local
2. If excel application scope is being used in multiple places consecutively better to sue a kill process before opening to ensure excel is closed
3. Better to set visible to false so that it is faster
4. Use workbook activities if you are only reading and writing which does not open excel

cheers