Cannot open excel files - error message'file might have been damaged or modified from its original f

[SJO]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I see this was an old discussion topic but have yet to find a solid solution. This problem whereby an existing file is worked on, saved and then will not open, is creating havoc with my excel documents. Error message is 'file might have been damaged or modified from its original format'!!??

Help???

 

[John_McGhie_[MVP]]

Sorry: Not enough detail to be able to answer.

What are you doing to that file? Exactly? I need the key-strokes

That error message is usually quite correct: the file has been damaged and
now Excel can't read it: what are you doing to it? What extension does it
have on the file name? How are you opening it?

Cheers

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
I see this was an old discussion topic but have yet to find a solid solution.
This problem whereby an existing file is worked on, saved and then will not
open, is creating havoc with my excel documents. Error message is 'file might
have been damaged or modified from its original format'!!??

Help???

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[SJO]

Hi,
..xlsx Spreadsheet with formulas is edited on an ongoing basis but has suddenly started giving that error message after last change was saved and document closed. So i have not done anything unusual to it and am worried this same thing may happen to other spreadsheets. It does sit on a networking drive on a small LAN where it is accessed by two users - one on an iMac and one on an old iBook. Both are running Snow Leopard and Office 2008.
Have tried opening with Numbers and then exporting back to Excel but it loses any images (in header / footer) and changes currency. Easy to remedy but dont want to have to do this to every spreadsheet our business works off!
can you assist?

 

[John_McGhie_[MVP]]

Sorry, but I really can't assist until I get the level of detail I was
asking for.

I suspect that what is happening is that someone is opening the file in the
wrong version of Excel an saving it back to the old format without changing
the extension.

Which means that any copy of Excel expecting the .xlxs file to contain XML
data finds it contains binary and can't read it. It may be that someone is
emailing the file through some email client that attempts to unzip the file.
An xlsx file is a zip file, but it must remain zipped or Excel can't read
it. One thing that will produce this error is if someone unzips the Excel
file on a Mac and accesses it in Finder. As soon as you do that, the Finder
scatters "Finder turds" in the file; and even if you re-zip the file after
that, Excel can't read it, because it is indeed "damaged".

It could be that someone is inserting something in the file that Excel on
the Mac can't read.

That error message is usually very specific: it means "Excel can't
understand the code in that file".

Hope this helps

Hi,
.xlsx Spreadsheet with formulas is edited on an ongoing basis but has suddenly
started giving that error message after last change was saved and document
closed. So i have not done anything unusual to it and am worried this same
thing may happen to other spreadsheets. It does sit on a networking drive on
a small LAN where it is accessed by two users - one on an iMac and one on an
old iBook. Both are running Snow Leopard and Office 2008.
Have tried opening with Numbers and then exporting back to Excel but it loses
any images (in header / footer) and changes currency. Easy to remedy but dont
want to have to do this to every spreadsheet our business works off!
can you assist?

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[jiang]

What version of your office is? If your office is office2003 or older version, you may try a xls repair tool called Advanced Excel Repair, I'v used it to repair an important excle file successfully, so you can also have a try: http://www.datanumen.com/aer/recovery.htm
Hope it can also help you solve your problem.
Julie

 

[ancelys.ihb]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I see this was an old discussion topic but have yet to find a solid solution. This problem whereby an existing file is worked on, saved and then will not open, is creating havoc with my excel documents. Error message is 'file might have been damaged or modified from its original format'!!??

Help???

OK..... SO what's the solution???? I'm having the same issue over here....