Excel write lock remains after write is complete

[JoshKushner]

After Alteryx completes creating/writing an Excel file, the write lock remains and that file can't be read for at least a day until, for some reason, the write lock goes away. Has anyone else found a way to prevent or work around this?

I do understand this might be related to the idea @SeanAdams wrote which unfortunately is dependent on partnership with Microsoft to resolve.

@Arianna_Fuller

[ddiesel · Accepted solution]

Hi @JoshKushner I'm not sure if this is helpful to you but I'll share that I personally had a lot of trouble with Excel files being locked after write when I was using them to work as databases. For me, it happened intermittently and it was super frustrating. I switched to writing/appending to SQL to make my apps more robust. When I send out Excel files as attachments, I write them dynamically. I haven't had any problems since but I never solved the Excel file locking issue. If you find a solution, please let me know.

[JoshKushner]

It's funny to hear you threw it into a database too! I just finished writing the data to a raw table in our database today as our work around.

I'll definitely let you know if I find a solution. I do have a sinking feeling it will only get fixed with a Microsoft partnership though.

[ColleenH218]

Just want to share that I'm experiencing this issue, too, in 2019.2. I've created a series of workflows that work somewhat like an application, and one of the first steps is that row IDs get written back to a customer supplied Excel file. I've had a few instances where that file essentially gets locked so that I can't use it as the basis of the next workflow like I need to. I can't delete it, I can't rename it and I can't replace it with another unlocked file of the same name. It essentially makes us dead in the water unless we copy the files to another location, rename them and save them as if they're new. And that's just a big ol' PITA.