Collaboration on a shared spreadsheet

[sbarger]

I'm on a Mac network, everyone is running the latest version of OS X Lion (and the server is Lion Server).
I create a spreadsheet on my server that I want to share on my network. I share the file, the file name indicates that I'm sharing, and all is well.
I create an alias for the spreadsheet, send it to another Mac workstation on the network. I click on that alias from the workstation, access the same spreadsheet, and all is still well.
(I notice a ~lock file appears in the folder on the server that the original file resides in.)
I go to a third computer, click on the alias, and get the following error message: Error during shared access to /Volumes/Shared Items/ (the filename)
It seems that I can only have two users connected at any given time to a "shared" spreadsheet. I need to be able to have at least six people collaborating on a spreadsheet at any given time.
All is not well. Even when I manually remove the ~lock file, I get the same results.

Any solutions to get around this ~lock file / limited sharing issue?

[FallenAvatar]

As far as I was aware, only one person could edit at a time, but anyone that has access can view it. Say two people open it up and both start editing diff parts, one user saves first, and when the second user saves it wipes out the changes the other user made....unless you have it tied to a database and the things being edited are within the database. Though I could be completely mistaken on that. I've never worked on a project that needed multiple people editing at the same time. My projects usually everyone get's their own copy.

[sbarger]

I would take that scenario, but after two people open the shared spreadsheet, the third person can't even view it--it's an immediate dump to the error message.
On the Mac end, everything is full read/write privileges, so this definitely seems like a OpenOffice issue.
I'd hate to have to go to Microsoft Office just for this!

[Villeroy]

Please, go back to MS Office. I feel much better when you risk your data with that software.

[sbarger]

The reason I left MS Office was because of its inherent instability, especially on the Mac. But, with a few clicks, I could get this simple task done.
There must be some way to make OO do it as well. Looking for a solution.

[kingfisher]

From a quick search I gather that the solution is to use Tools > Share document.

[Villeroy]

From a quick search I gather that the solution is to use Tools > Share document.

This will destroy your document sooner or later and it only works with the same version of the same office program and probably with the same operating system. I tried to do this once in a Windows network and failed. I had to repair content.xml after that.
Since no spreadsheet can work like a database without losing its slick and sloppy spreadsheetness, you've got to face similar problems with MS Excel: http://www.corality.com/blog/are-you-us ... lity-excel
Please, destroy your data with Excel.

[RoryOF]

There are some "collaboration" applications, such as Alfresco; one of these might give you the functionality you require, but as Villleroy says, multiple editing access to the one document is likely to eventually cause destruction of it.

[FallenAvatar]

I would also agree that it seems to me a BAD idea unless you absolutely have to do it, and if you have to do it then use a content management system like Rory suggested. I don't know much about the program he suggested, but I looked and it comes with a "Versioning" feature which is definitely something you are going to want so that you can roll back changes if something goes wrong.

[kingfisher]

Hi. Just got this link from another thread.

OOoServer

The OpenOffice.org server manages a pool of OpenOffice.org processes. It makes sure that only one connection at the time can be made to a particular process. The level of concurrency can be configured through the process pool size. By default each connection is handled by a new OpenOffice.org process, but it is possible to configure a life span, which results in the reuse of processes.

OOoServer is hosted on SourceForge.