Excel 2008 cannot open xlsx and xlsb filescreated by Excel 2007 for PC

[Robert_Eidschun]

Just today (17 January 2008), I installed Office 2008 on my Mac and discovered a major incompatibility: Excel files, moderate in size or larger (e.g., 2 Mb) created in Excel 2007 for PC and saved in xlsx and xlsb formats cannot be opened by Excel 2008 for Mac.

I just spent an hour on the phone with technical support at Microsoft. While talking to the support person there, I sent to him three such files, and he and his collegues were unable to open any of them in Excel 2008.

If you try to open such a file in Excel 2008, the latter seems to "hang", but will eventually report (after 10 to 15 minutes) that the file is "incompatible" or "corrupt". I sent three such files to Microsoft, and, while they were able to open all of them in Excel 2007 for PC, they could not open any of them in Excel 2008. They are deferring the matter to the Mac development team at Microsoft for further investigation, but for now, have no fix.

I also tried to use Excel 2008 to open such a file that was residing on the Windows partition of my Mac's hard drive, but once again, Excel 2008 was unable to open it.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Robert:

Yeah. We know

The more of these you send to Microsoft, the sooner we will get them fixed.

However, the bottom line is that PC Office is capable of creating artefacts
in its files that Mac Office cannot handle.

Office 2008 does not have all the features and functions of its PC big
brother. So when you start pushing the limits, you will find there are
files that Office 2008 can't handle.

In some cases, the files are slightly corrupt. In other cases, they contain
embedded objects from programs such as MS Project that don't exist in Office
for Mac.

In most cases, PC files will work just fine. But there are known
exceptions.

The problems have nothing to do with "size", by the way. It's not the size
of the file that's the problem, it's the artefacts it contains.

This was a very long "Non-answer", wasn't it?

I feel your pain. I am hoping for better in the next version of Mac Office.

Cheers

Just today (17 January 2008), I installed Office 2008 on my Mac and discovered
a major incompatibility: Excel files, moderate in size or larger (e.g., 2 Mb)
created in Excel 2007 for PC and saved in xlsx and xlsb formats cannot be
opened by Excel 2008 for Mac.

I just spent an hour on the phone with technical support at Microsoft. While
talking to the support person there, I sent to him three such files, and he
and his collegues were unable to open any of them in Excel 2008.

If you try to open such a file in Excel 2008, the latter seems to "hang", but
will eventually report (after 10 to 15 minutes) that the file is
"incompatible" or "corrupt". I sent three such files to Microsoft, and, while
they were able to open all of them in Excel 2007 for PC, they could not open
any of them in Excel 2008. They are deferring the matter to the Mac
development team at Microsoft for further investigation, but for now, have no
fix.

I also tried to use Excel 2008 to open such a file that was residing on the
Windows partition of my Mac's hard drive, but once again, Excel 2008 was
unable to open it.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[CyberTaz]

I doubt that it's so much the file *size* as it is the file *content* - for
one thing 2008 includes no support for VBA, so depending on the file's
dependence on VBA operations there could be a serious problem. Other types
of content - such as ActiveX Controls, certain graphic object types, etc.
may not be Mac-compatible even though the file type is.

Are you able to open the files with 2004 using the converters? Can you save
out of 2007 in 95/2003 format? What happens if you do?

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Robert_Eidschun]

Concerning the problematic Excel files, there are no macros, VBA scripts, ActiveX Controls, etc. in those files. There are, however, two charts on one of the spreadsheets contained within.

I tried to use the converter, "Office Open XML Converter.app", on the files, at the request of Microsoft's technical support while I had them on the phone, but the converter responded, "Incompatible file type".

Even if I could convert those Workbook files to, say, Excel 2004 format, they would be altered substantially, since there are 400 columns in one of the spreadsheets contained within. By the way, before adding columns to them,, I used to open those files in Excel 2004 without incident, i.e. the only difference between those files and versions of those files that I used to work with in Excel 2004 is that these latest versions have about 150 extra columns in one of the spreadsheets contained within.