User profile for user: PhilThorpe84
PhilThorpe84 Author
User level: Level 1
9 points

Excel Saving Violation on External Hard Drive

Hi there,


I have a WD Elements external hard drive which is directly usb hooked up to my Mac mini which is where we store all our data. This in turn is backed up through our home network to a WD MyCloudMirror device. I can save an Excel file in .xlsm format and also .xlsb for the first time on to the WD Element drive, however if I make a change or want to re-save the file and in theory overwrite the original file I receive the following warning:


'Your changes could not be saved to 'Home Budget Planner 2020.xlsx' because of a sharing violation. Try saving to a different file.'


Then followed by these two messages:


'The file format and extension of ’42D87A00.MACTF’ don’t match. The file could be corrupted or unsafe. Unless you trust its source, don’t open it. Do you want to open it anyway?'


'Your changes could not be saved to 'Home Budget Planner 2020.xlsx', but were saved to a temporary document named '42D87A00.MACTF'. Close the existing document, then open the temporary document and save it under a new name.'


The WD elements drive has been for ExFAT so should work to that capacity. All share options have been set as read & write, so I'm not too sure why this violation keeps popping up. I can save the file directly to the Mac and rewrite over it no problem, its just saving it to an external source which seems to be the problem.


All apps and drives etc are fully up today from what I can tell.


Hopefully someone can help solve what should be a simple solution I would imagine?


Many thanks

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 4, 2020 4:45 AM

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User profile for user: Sivaulis
Sivaulis
User level: Level 1
4 points

Posted on Feb 4, 2020 7:43 PM

Here's what's going on in simple terms:


Basically the Excel file is stuck opening in a fake read-only mode.


You can open the file, you can close the file, you can edit the instance of the file you have open, but the second you try to commit the file changes, you will encounter this error. Excel does not have the proper permissions to overwrite the existing file where you have it hosted (in this case, your external hard drive).


Creating and saving a new file to the External hard drive works without issue because you're not overwriting existing data, you're creating new data. Your suspicion that the issue happens on overwriting the data is completely correct; This is entirely a permissions issue between your MacOS, Excel client, and the WD external hard drive.


Here's something you can try as a test to prove this (and then ultimately fix it):


  1. Open "system preferences > Security and Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access"
  2. Select the "+" button (this will open a finder window)
  3. In the finder window, select "Applications" from the left side navigation
  4. Under applications, select Excel (If you have any of the WD client side software installed on your mac, add those too)
  5. Save the settings
  6. Test opening and saving an existing Excel file to your WD harddrive
  7. Profit


*Disclaimer: granting apps full disk access is always a little risky from a security perspective. These steps should be used as a test to prove that this is a permissions issue. If the above steps resolve the issue, then you can backtrack and find out exactly what permissions Excel is complaining about specifically.

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User profile for user: Sivaulis
Sivaulis
User level: Level 1
4 points

Feb 4, 2020 7:43 PM in response to PhilThorpe84

Here's what's going on in simple terms:


Basically the Excel file is stuck opening in a fake read-only mode.


You can open the file, you can close the file, you can edit the instance of the file you have open, but the second you try to commit the file changes, you will encounter this error. Excel does not have the proper permissions to overwrite the existing file where you have it hosted (in this case, your external hard drive).


Creating and saving a new file to the External hard drive works without issue because you're not overwriting existing data, you're creating new data. Your suspicion that the issue happens on overwriting the data is completely correct; This is entirely a permissions issue between your MacOS, Excel client, and the WD external hard drive.


Here's something you can try as a test to prove this (and then ultimately fix it):


  1. Open "system preferences > Security and Privacy > Privacy > Full Disk Access"
  2. Select the "+" button (this will open a finder window)
  3. In the finder window, select "Applications" from the left side navigation
  4. Under applications, select Excel (If you have any of the WD client side software installed on your mac, add those too)
  5. Save the settings
  6. Test opening and saving an existing Excel file to your WD harddrive
  7. Profit


*Disclaimer: granting apps full disk access is always a little risky from a security perspective. These steps should be used as a test to prove that this is a permissions issue. If the above steps resolve the issue, then you can backtrack and find out exactly what permissions Excel is complaining about specifically.

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User profile for user: hcsitas
hcsitas
User level: Level 6
13,964 points

Jan 5, 2020 12:32 AM in response to PhilThorpe84

I couldn't replicate the problem so I'm positive it's your mirror setup that's getting in the way.


I would first verify this theory and if proven correct, disable real-time mirroring entirely. It's overkill, you really don't need it assuming you configure Time Machine to periodically backup the working disk to a separate backup disk.


A simpler way is to have the working directory on the Mac itself and have TM backup to external disk every four hours or so. Needless to say, the only time I've needed backups with this method is when files were deleted inadvertently. It also has the advantage of faster disk operation.


Short summary: say goodbye to over-engineered WD cloud-mirror. Worth thinking about, no pain, all gain. Good luck!

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User profile for user: PhilThorpe84
PhilThorpe84 Author
User level: Level 1
9 points

Jan 4, 2020 3:48 PM in response to hcsitas

Hi, thanks for getting back to me.


The external hard drive is usb connected directly to the mini. The cloud mirror is connected to the network. Excel files are being saved on to the external hard drive directly (usb connection) and not the mini hard drive or through the network to the mirror. The mirror is purely on the network to back up the external hard drive as a fail safe, which it does automatically as soon as new data is saved down onto the hard drive.


Gave extra detail on the mirror back-ups just incase the file changes its permmissions once backed up to the mirror over the network. However I am able to open the file in excel, I just can't re-save it.


Create new excel workbook > File > Save As > Home Drive (the USB external hard drive name) > Documents (subfolder) > Finance (subfolder) > Save (.xlsx)


This works fine, then without making any changes and keeping the file still open I select the little disk (save) icon at the top of the excel toolbar. This is when the violation message occurs. When I carry out the following; File > Save the external hard drive location appears but the .xlsx files are all greyed out. Like mentioned above, I am able to close excel and open the file direct from the external drive, I just can't save any changes without saving the file with a new name.



Hope those may help?


Many thanks



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Excel Saving Violation on External Hard Drive

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