Excel File on a NAS Share Edit From Many PCs Without the Internet
A shared workbook hosted on a colleague's PC dies every time that PC sleeps, updates or goes home early. A NAS just sits there — awake, quiet, serving the file to every desk in the office. Moving the master workbook onto a NAS is the single biggest reliability upgrade offline Excel collaboration can get.
✍️ Technical Anshu🪟 Windows 10 / 11⏱️ 8 minute read
🎥 Watch the full video — offline Excel collaboration set up step by step on a local network
The video's method — one workbook on a network share, opened by everyone — works on any host, but the host choice decides how often the team gets interrupted. A desktop PC is a host with a human attached: it reboots for updates, sleeps at lunch and gets switched off at night by the cleaner. A NAS is a small server built to do one thing continuously. This page covers putting the shared workbook on a Synology or QNAP-class NAS: the setup order, the handful of NAS-specific traps, and the honest limits that do not change just because the host improved.
The NAS as the office file home — the shape of the setup
The NAS — always onHolds the one master workbook
PC 1 — billing deskOpens the file from the NAS share
PC 2 — stock deskSame file, same share
PC 3 — manager's cabinSame file, same share
InternetNOT INVOLVED AT ANY POINT
One always-on host, one file, every desk opening it over the LAN. Nothing in this diagram needs the internet, a cloud account or a subscription.
1
Setup Order — Share, Accounts, Then the Workbook
Do these in order and the NAS behaves like the video's PC share, only steadier.
Create a shared folder on the NAS — for example named OfficeShare — from its control panel
Create a user account on the NAS for each staff member, and give the group read/write permission on that folder — no guest access, no shared 'office' password everyone knows
Move the master workbook into the folder and turn on Share Workbook in Excel exactly as the core guide describes
On each PC, open the workbook through its UNC path, for example \\NAS-NAME\OfficeShare\Sales-Register.xlsx, or map the share to a drive letter and open it from there
Confirm every PC's title bar shows [Shared] before declaring the move complete
2
What the NAS Fixes — and What It Does Not
Honesty matters here, because 'we bought a NAS' gets treated as a spell that ends all sharing problems. It ends exactly one class of them.
Fixed: availability — no human PC to sleep, update or be switched off; the file is simply always there
Fixed: neutrality — the file no longer lives 'on Ramesh's computer', so access survives his leave days and his PC's replacement
Not fixed: the rules of the file itself — a plain workbook on the NAS still locks to its first opener, and a shared workbook still merges on save, not live
Not fixed: conflicts, blocked features and refresh delay — those belong to Excel's sharing mode, not to the host
3
NAS-Specific Traps Worth Knowing
A few surprises are unique to NAS hosting and worth meeting on paper first.
Sleep and disk spin-down: the first open of the morning can take several extra seconds while drives wake — normal, not a fault
Turn off guest access: an open guest share lets anyone on the Wi-Fi into office data; named accounts cost ten minutes once
Clock matters: keep the NAS time synchronised — file timestamps and change history get confusing when the host clock drifts
SMB signing and version prompts on newer Windows: if a PC refuses the share, fix it with proper credentials on the NAS rather than weakening the PC's security settings
4
The Backup Warning — A NAS Copy Is Not a Backup
The most dangerous sentence in a small office is 'the file is on the NAS, so it is backed up'. A NAS protects against a PC dying. It does not protect against the file being deleted, corrupted by a bad save, or encrypted by ransomware that reached the share — those events happily include the NAS copy.
Use the NAS's own snapshot feature on the shared folder, scheduled daily — snapshots survive accidental deletes and bad saves
Copy the workbook off the NAS regularly — external USB drive or another machine — so one physical copy exists outside the box
Test a restore once: bring back yesterday's snapshot of the workbook and open it — a backup you have never restored is a hope, not a backup
🔴 RAID is not backup either. A two-disk NAS mirror survives one disk dying. It mirrors a deletion, a corruption or an encryption the same second it happens. Snapshots plus one copy outside the NAS are what turn this setup from convenient into safe.
🎥 Watch the Share Setup the Video Demonstrates
The video builds this on a PC share; every step — folder, permissions, shared workbook, second PC opening it — transfers to the NAS unchanged.
Does moving the file to a NAS remove the locked for editing problem
No. The lock belongs to how Excel and SMB handle a normal workbook, wherever it is hosted. On the NAS an ordinary file still locks to the first opener, and the shared workbook mode is still what allows several editors together. The NAS improves the host — always on, nobody's desktop — not the file's sharing rules.
Can a NAS give us real-time live editing like Google Sheets
Yes, but through a different door: Synology and QNAP devices can run or connect office suites such as OnlyOffice or Collabora — often through Nextcloud — which edit the file in the browser with live cursors, entirely inside your LAN. That is a bigger setup than a plain share, and it is the route the video itself names for teams that outgrow shared workbooks.
Do all PCs need the same Excel version to use a NAS share
No. The share is plain SMB file access, so mixed desktop Excel versions open the same workbook. For shared workbook mode all editors should be on desktop Excel for Windows or Mac, since the legacy sharing controls do not exist in the phone apps or Excel for the web — those can view the file but are not full participants in the shared mode.
This guide follows the offline Excel collaboration method in the Technical Anshu video above • Stuck on a step? Ask in the video comments and the community will help 🙏