Excel 08 Pivot Table Crashes

[stefan_eb]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: intel

Hi,

I am using Pivot tables for a while now. Since upgrading to Excel 2008 however I experience a lot of crashes or corrupt files.

1. I am using a 40MB .xls Pivot Table which worked fine in Excel 04 and is usable in Excel 08. As soon as I save it in .xlsx (now 12MB) I cannot open it anymore (progress indicator freezes in the middle). The compatibility check reports no critical issue. No VBA, Macros or anything else are involved. Opening the .xlsx in Office 07 PC works fine. If I save this file from within Excel 07 PC again and open it in Excel 08 I get the message that the file maybe is corrupt or the format was changed.

2. I created some Pivot tables from within Excel 08 adding charts to the results and saved them in .xls and .xlsx format. In several occasions the .xslx were unreadable for Excel 08 as well as Excel 07 PC. The latter was able to open the file but it reported an error and reconstructed a table where all Pivot functionality was gone. It looked like a Pivot (formatting of the cells) but was in fact a non interactive, simple table.

This is really annoying. At the moment I do not trust Excel anymore. I lost several hours of work because the saved files created originally from within Excel 08 were corrupted. The other applications on my system work fine.

Any ideas?

 

[Pat McMillan]

We're currently investigating several reports of problems with pivottables
in Excel 2008 (especially very large pivot tables). We're hoping to be able
to release an update in the near future that will fix those issues. If you
have access to a web server where you could drop any files that have this
problem I would be happy to investigate them.

Thanks,

Pat McMillan
(e-mail address removed)

 

[goddessnomi]

I am having a similar issue. I created a new Excel sheet in mac with 2 pivot tables. Suddenly it shut down with the "Excel has encountered an error." It did not save a backup & and I could not open the original file (just got "excel has encountered an error - over & over). So I started over & created the sheet again. Again, an hour into my project it gave me the error message. I refused to have lost another hour so I tried opening the file on a PC - although it seemed to not have saved at least one of my last times (I was saving regularly this second time), I was able to open it & finish working on it.

So I then tried to open it again on my Mac. No luck, again "excel has encountered an error."

I have MANY sheets with multiple pivot tables & this makes it so I cannot use my Mac at all for accounting and tracking purposes - 50% of my job!!

 

[Pat McMillan]

Hi,

I'm sorry to hear about the problems you're having with pivot tables. As a
short term solution, I wonder if you have any pivot tables that reference
entire columns of data (for example, B:B)? If so, if you can try
constraining those references to just the specific data you're referencing
(for example, B1:B1000), it may resolve the problem. In the meantime, we are
working on a fix that we hope to release soon that should resolve the issue
you're seeing.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[vfxjohn]

When trying to open an excel 2008 file with a few pivot tables, i
receive the message:

"Excel cannot open this file.
The file might have been damaged or modified from its original
format."

Now, I have been working on this document for multiple hours and
regularly saving. And now I cant open it? This is ridiculous.
Office 2008 costs how much? And I'm forced into saving multiple
copies of the file now?

Please tell me a solution to access my file is in the works.

 

[vfxjohn]

I was able to send the file to a coworker using the windows version of
excel - when they opened it, it recognized the file being corrupt, but
offered to fix it. *big sigh of relief*

It appears that the fix not only made the file usable, but didn't
demolish any of my previous charts. For those of you having problems,
you may want to try going down the same avenue. It's a quick fix.