Someone else is working in <T:\Folder\File> right now. Please try again later - Saving to Network Share Fails

Feedback Activities
, ,
1

Seeing an issue where the excel activity is failing to save a file to a network share due to “Someone else is working in <servername\Folder\File> right now. Please try again later”. This appears to be impacting only intermittently and root cause has not been identified. I have found the following potential work around and I am implementing some testing to see if this resolves the issue.

Reference: Someone else is working in <T:\Folder\File> right now. Please try again later - Microsoft Q&A

Workaround:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word\Options]
“DisableRobustifiedUNC”=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\Options]
“DisableRobustifiedUNC”=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint\Options]
“DisableRobustifiedUNC”=dword:00000001

3

I recommend not using mapped drives. You should use the full UNC ie \\servername\folder\folder\file

4

We are not using mapped drives. The original post was just generic message I found from MS forum. I will update to avoid confusion.

5

Hi @robertschneider ,

Is there any correlation between someone editing the file (and locking it) and the automations failing?

6

No we confirmed the file was and is not locked while attempting to interact with it. The registry change has allowed us to continue with the Excel activities within UiPath and this appears to be something related to how the activities are interacting with files on a network location.

7

This has resolved our issue, however, it reduces the capabilities of working with network share files. Open to anyone that is experiencing this issue and found RCA.

8

What version Excel did you experience that on and can you specify which activity was encountering this?

10

Can you explain in what way it reduces capabilities?
We also had the same issue and implemented the work around and that seems to have resolved it, still working on RCA, considering nothing has changed in our environment I’m leaning towards a Microsoft /Security patch that was introduced.

11

Microsoft does not publicly identify this registry key and all I could locate was found here:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/word-2007-very-slow-to-open-document-on-server-via/4b4d146e-4ab4-4c57-8324-58357b65b388

While the effect of the registry key has not been publicly documented by Microsoft, the “Robustified UNC” feature affects the security mechanisms used when opening a file from or saving a file to a network share in Office applications.

Disabling the “Robustified UNC” feature could also solve issues such as documents not opening when double clicked from a network share (while Word does open) or hangs or slow performance when opening/saving files that are located on a network share.

12

Thank you, those links were helpful.

13

I’ve filed this on our side to try and repro it and investigate it further.

15

this happens in Mac Pro, & window file sharing networking Go to “System settings/General/file sharing/Shared folders”
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