Mac problems opening excel files whenconnected to two windows shares

[gandalf50]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel I'm noticing a strange problem when I try to open excel files when I connect to a second windows server share. I'm getting a cannot open excel file error. Not sitting at my work mac computer at the moment so not quite sure that was the exact error.

This error is occuring on both leopard and snow leopard with Office 2008 for mac.

The two windows servers are being connected to by smb://server1/common and smb://server2/common.

If i connect to each one individually I can open excel files on either of the common shares. If I connect to smb://server1/common and then to smb://server2/common I will get the error on smb://server2/common when I try to open excel files. If i disconnect server1/common I will be able to open the excel files on server2/common

This seems to only happen with excel files and not other office files.

I have a hunch its because both shares are called common and for some reason excel is getting confused when i connect to the second common even though its on a second server. Changing the second share name would cause a major headache since many users are mapped to both.

Has anyone seen this problem and know any possible solutions.

 

[scottfw]

I have noticed the exact same issue. A user using Excel for Mac 2004 on a Leopard 10.5.8 machine first reported this problem and I have been able to recreate it in Excel for Mac 2008 on Snow Leopard 10.6.2.

I think it's not just the "second Windows share" problem like you seem to believe. I believe it is related to the fact that the two share names are the same.

I have tried four servers. Two have shares called "DocumentDistribution" and two have shares called "DocumentDist". If I have both of the DocumentDistribution shares mounted, I cannot open Excel files on whichever server was mounted second. This goes for the DocumentDist share too. It does not matter if connected AFP or SMB or if one is connected AFP and the other SMB or vice versa. If I connect to two shares on two servers that have two different share names, we have no issues opening Excel files.

This seems to be a bug in Microsoft Excel for Mac.

 

[scottfw]

I looked into this some more. When I mount two shares called "DocumentDistribution", they both show up as volumes called "DocumentDistribution" in Finder.

However, if I open Terminal and "cd /Volumes" then "ls", I see both "DocumentDistribution" and "DocumentDistribution-1". Using both Finder and Terminal, I can browse both mounts with no issue. In Terminal, the volume with "-1" at the end is always the second server mounted. However in Finder they are both known as "DocumentDistribution".

So somewhere in Mac OS, the Mac knows it has two shares with the same name "DocumentDistribution" mounted, but to keep them straight mounts one of them with a "-1" at the end. But it hides this fact from the user. I think what is happening is that when Excel for Mac tries to open the file on the second server, it is using the "DocumentDistribuiton" alias rather than its real mount name and hence it is trying to find the file on the first server mounted and of course can't fine that file at that location.

That's just a guess though.

 

[gandalf50]

Actually if you read my post again I was say that it was becasue both shares had the same name. See the line "I have a hunch its because both shares are called common "
Thanks for the info though.
It hasnt been that big an issue since now I just advise users to disonnect one the shares.