>i want to open an excel sheet from my vfp program. but without using the OLE container.
>
>how can it be done???
>
>also, when someone is working on that excel sheet, is there any way whereby someone else can also work on that sheet just as we use vfp tables in the shared mode.

You can establish an ODBC or ADO connection to Excel Workbook using Jet ISAM driver and can work with data in Excel file exactly as with other data sources. See KB article Q278973 "SAMPLE: ExcelADO Demonstrates How to Use ADO to Read and Write Data in Excel Workbooks". I think that you can open Excel files in shared mode using this way.