How to prevent the import of lockfiles?

Right now in our Assets we have an Excel file named balance.xlsx. This file contains all the balance data for our game - damages, costs etc. This file is processed by a PostProcessor that reads data from it using the NPOI library and sets it in ScriptableObjects that use it in-game.

The problem is this - when opening the Excel file, Excel creates a lockfile named ~$balance.xlsx. Unity attempts to import this file, but it can't - it does not have permission, so it displays an error dialog with 3 options - Try Again, Force Quit (quits Unity) and Cancel (stops the import of this file). Clicking Cancel during Play mode stops the game - this is undesired behaviour for us.

Is there a way to prevent Unity from importing just these lockfiles, maybe something akin to git's .gitignore?

 

Googling indicates you might be able to disable the creation of these lockfiles by Excel. Does that help?

 

I have the same question, but after searching, I only found a couple of feature requests for Unity to ignore files selectively and a dozen questions about how to fix locked Excel files.

There doesn't seem to be a way to stop Excel from creating these author/lock files other than editing the registry of the local machine. But that's no good when working in a team.

It's too bad Unity doesn't ignore files that start with '~'. I mean, it ignores dots and files that end in '~', but Microsoft chose to use a prefix (which makes sense anyway).