Does Excel have a bug that forces an unchanged worksheet to be saved again?
Gordon H writes:
“Here’s a long standing bug in Excel that Microsoft has never fixed. I open a Word document, look at it then close the document – there’s been no change to the file so Word closes it without a prompt. But if I open an Excel worksheet and just view it with no editing then Excel will always prompt to save the document even though there’s no changes. “
Much as we love to highlight bugs in Microsoft Office, this isn’t one of them.
Because Excel worksheets can be very large, the program opens a worksheet and automatically displays the cells you were viewing when last saved. Opening a worksheet and viewing it will change the ‘last location viewed’ setting which causes the save prompt when you close the worksheet.
When Word closes a document it doesn’t save the place you were viewing (editing location is saved) so there’s no trigger for a ‘viewing only’ document.
If you want to open an Excel worksheet to view it only and avoid the Save prompt the easiest option is to open the worksheet in ‘Read only’ mode.
In the File Open dialog there’s a pull-down list option ‘Open Read-only’.
