Excel - different figures returned?!
 

Hi,

I have build a forecasting model in Excel. Long story short - we have a folder that contains several workbooks. There is a mapping workbook that houses all the data (50MB). We also have lowest level workbooks that, when opened, also open the mapping workbook hidden in the background (read-only), so that the figures update and users can input.

Each of these lowest level work books then roll up to a consolidation workbook (that also opens the mapping workbook hidden in the background), but figures are direct links to the lower level workbooks, i.e. SUM(S:\Shared folder\forecast folder\lower level 1, S:\Shared folder\forecast folder\lower level 2, S:\Shared folder\forecast folder\lower level 3, etc). Some of these consolidation workbooks link to 4 lower level workbooks, while others link to more.

Now, this has worked fine previously (last month), however this month something strange has happened. When we open a consolidation workbook we are getting inflated numbers. I got a colleague to open it on their pc (obviously read-only) and they had completely different numbers to me?! NB: one of the workbooks was correct and the other was wrong.

So I closed and my colleague opened it and got strange numbers again. Then they closed and I tried and the numbers were correct again.

Does anyone know what's going on here?

On the consolidation workbooks I have some VBA in workbookopen that updates the linsk to the lower level workbooks and recalculates on workbook open. Even after opening, we can F9 and still get the incorrect figures.

I'm thinking possible it's because more people are trying to access their lower level workbooks (there are 47 lower level workbooks) and subsequently everyone is opening up the mapping file in the background all at the same time. This was not the case last month. But then, the figures for the consolidated workbooks are direct filepath links to the lower level workbooks, bot calculated from the mapping file.

If anyone can offer any guidance and/or explanation I would be greatly appreciative. Also, please advise if you require more detail.

Thanks in advance.And sorry for the novel!

Hi, have re-opened this under another thread with a better title. Thanks