Version conflicts

D

Darryl

I have a problem that is very unusual. In essence, one of our staff can read
an excel spreadsheet, modify it, and save it, and close down, all apparently
successful. The only problem is that sometimes, not all the time, when she
goes to read the file she has just saved Excel complains that it is
unreadable. We are having trouble identifying any consistent behaviour linked
to those times where it becomes unreadable.

Some background.
I originally created the file using Excel 2003, and it has some reasonable
sophisticated macros that do things like querying an Oracle database. When I
transferred it to the network drive for production use, the end users were
unable to read it because they had Excel 2000. I saved it in Excel 95 format,
and then reloaded the macros by importing them. At that point, everything
works OK. All the macros do what they are supposed to do, and the spreadsheet
saves OK except for some spurious occasions. I have access to Excel 2000 via
a Citrix terminal. When the file becomes unreadable for the end-user, it is
not readable in the Citrix version either so I can confirm that. However I
cannot recreate the problem at all. For those who have to use this
spreadsheet, it happens about once per day or every two days, and they would
save it probably 5-10 times per day.

Another piece of the puzzle. This "corruption" has just happened again, and
I find that I can read the file perfectly well with Excel 2003. It is as if
it has reverted back to the 2003 file format, even though it has been saved
with Excel 2000.

Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.

Darryl
 
D

Dave Peterson

First, the file format for xl97 to xl2003 is the same. xl2k should be able to
read any file you created in xl2003.

But it does sound like your file is corrupted--and different versions of excel
react to different "levels" of corruption.

Sometimes earlier versions of excel can read files that later versions can't.
Sometimes (more usual) the later versions can handle stuff that the earlier
versions can't.

If it is a corrupted workbook, you may want to try openoffice. Lots of people
have said that it's recovered workbooks (include the project) that excel
couldn't.

(http://www.openoffice.org, a 60-65 meg download or a CD)

If the file is really important, there are commercial recovery services. I've
never used it, but you might want to check into:
http://www.officerecovery.com
 
D

Darryl

Dave,

thanks for the info. I will rebuild the spreadsheet using copy and paste
etc. and see what happens. It has been really confusing us that it has been
intermittent. We will know in a few days if it works. BTW, I do use
OpenOffice at home, and am not surprised at your comments.

Again, thanks,
Darryl
 
D

Dave Peterson

Maybe you can bring the file home, open and save as an OpenOffice document.
Then reopen and resave as .xls.

You could get lucky and the problem may go away.

Might be worth the try????

If you do try it, please post back. I'm curious about the results.
 
Top