Sharing script among other machines over network

Question

Hi,
I have a script that does the following:
1) Opens a pre-made excel workbook (BVHigh.xls)
2) prompts the user to input data through two input prompt boxes (name and grade level for ten students) which then populates the ten sheets of the workbook
3) Renames the tabs of the appropriate sheets
How do I enable the script to be shared among other users over the network? I've included the script and the excel workbook in a folder on our network attached storage device but when I test it from another computer, it simply opens a new workbook rather than the one specified.
Here is the beginning of the script:
tell application "Microsoft Excel"
try
activate
open workbook workbook file name "BVHigh.xls"
activate object worksheet "names"
set myrange to range "A2" of worksheet "names"
set myname to input box prompt "Please type a Student Name title "Students"
set value of myrange to myname
set name of sheet 3 to myname
set myrange to range "B2" of worksheet "names"
set myname to input box prompt "What grade level is this ¬student?" title "Grade Level?"
set value of myrange to myname
This works well on the machine on which it was created (Mac Book Pro- 10.6.2)
Surely I must be missing something! We have mostly eMacs running 10.5.8 and all are running Office 2008.
I could just provide the excel workbook on its own and have the teachers do more on their own but I'd really like to showcase the abilities of Applescript!
Any ideas/suggestions/help will be greatly appreciated!
I also would like to "save as" the workbook based on other data that is provided by the user (from a cell value) but am mainly interested in resolving the sharing protocol which I am clearly missing.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The most obvious problem is that you're just telling Excel to open a file without any consideration of where that file might be.
open workbook workbook file name "BVHigh.xls"
How is Excel to know where this file is? I'm actually surprised it works at all - even on your machine, but I assume that means Excel has a preset list of locations it checks.
At the very least I'd expect this line to require a path to the file you want to open:
open workbook workbook file "Macintosh HD:path:to:BVHigh.xls"
Of course, this begs another question of how to do that in a multi-system environment where you may or may not have control over the path to the file. Either you will need to standardize on the file location, or you may need to craft a more robust script - for example one that's aware of relative paths, or that prompts the user to select the file.