ExcelBanter - Automatic closedown of Excel 2000 after a period of activity

david wrote...
....
However I know there will be some staff that will enter their data and
then leave the spreadsheet open hence preventing others from accessing
it.

What I would like is an instruction that could tell Excel to close the
spreadsheet after a certain period of key inactivity.

Easier just to have all teachers open a common read-only file. When you
*SAVE* the file, use FileSave As, and click on Tools in the top row
inside the Save As dialog, then select General Options, check Read-only
recommended in the Save Options dialog, click OK, then continue saving
the file as you usually would. Then use Windows Explorer to make the
file Rad-only by selecting it in Windows Explorer, right clicking it to
display the pop-up menu, select Properties, then check Read-only near
the bottom of the General tab in the file's Properties dialog. Once
you've done that, everyone opening the file will open a read-only copy
but without Excel displaying any dialogs warning that the file is
read-only. Your users could still save the file under *different*
filenames or in different folders.

Alternatively, if I share the spreadsheet and teacher 1 is working on
line 14, what will happen if teacher 2 then clicks the button and
creates a new line 14 and starts entering on it. Will it over-write
teacher 1's entry or will it move teacher 1's entry to line 15 so that
the spreadsheet can be worked on simultaneously by both teachers 1 & 2?

If the file isn't read-only, then if teacher 1 has the file open when
teacher 2 tries to open it, Excel will warn teacher 2 that the file is
already open and ask whether teacher 2 wants to open the file
read-only. Moreover, if teacher 1 hasn't *SAVED* the file since
modifying line 14, then when teacher 2 opens the file teacher 1's
changes won't appear. For that matter, *NONE* of teacher 2's changes
will appear in teacher 1's copy of the open file.

Basically, unless you're using **SHARED** workbooks (and you most
definitely should have mentioned that if it's the case), each user gets
his/her own *COPY* of the workbook. The workbook file may be stored in
a common location on disk, but Excel works with copies of files loaded
into RAM (aka memory, volatile storage, etc), not directly with files
on disk. Different users opening the file on different computers would
have separate copies of the file in RAM on their respective, separate
computers.

Only the first user opening the file would be able to save changes back
to the file on disk. None of the other users would be able to overwrite
the original file, and furthermore none of the other users would be
able to see the first user's changes without closing their own RAM
copies (saving them elsewhere or not), then reopening the file from
disk.

Sorry if this is a bit complicated - please get back to me if you think
you can help but don't understand exactly what I mean.

Not complicated. Very basic multiple user setup. Discussed MANY times
in the past. You should get familiar with using the Google Groups
archive to search past newsgroup discussions.