i have a small office setup with FMP5 on 4 machines. the pertinent files reside on a shared folder of the "host" computer. sometimes all 4 users access the at the same time. originally, the system worked fine. now, for reasons unknown, 1 or 2 of the machines can't access the files after it is started on another machine. i'll get "file is already in use and is a single user file" (or words to that effect). usually the program opens with the flash of a small screen alluding to the files being "multi-user". in that case, it seems to work o.k. other times it opens without that and no other user can access the files.

any ideas? thanks.

The basic setup is wrong. You can't (shouldn't really) share FM files like other Word, Excel or Access files. Doing what you are doing is the #1 cause of data and file corruption.

- remove the OS file sharing from the folder where the FM files are

- have a copy of FM on the machine where the files are open the files

- all others open the hosted files through "open remote" or a local opener file.

- for best results and to take live backups, use a copy of FileMaker Server

There is white paper on my website that describes the reasoning behind all this.