Excel 2010 - Unreadable Content

[Roddy]

Hi

I have searched both here and via Google and cannot locate an answer to this.

I am now using Office (Excel in particular) 2010 at work, having upgraded from Office 2007 a month ago.

Every week for the past 18 months I have been receiving via email an Excel workbook in a .zip file, which I do some minor work on and fwd to my boss. I have always been able to Unzip it and open and edit it - until Excel 2010.

Now, after unzipping and opening I get the " Excel found unreadbale content in "XXXXXXX".xls. Do you want to recover the contents of this workbook? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes".

I click YES, and nothing opens.

I am also unable to open it after saving it to a location and going, from within Excel, File/Open - drilling down to located file then using Open and Repair command - again just a blank Excel page.

I keep reading about same issue in Excel 2007, where I never HAD the issue in 2007, about pivot tables (none on these workbooks) , external data sources (none on these workbooks) and ,finally, to remove the Current Time Member properties. If I can't open the file how do I do this????

Anyhelp would be GREATLY appreciated. These are vital files...

Rgds
Rod

 

[Johnathan Lyman]

Does the workbook have any complex formulas that link to external workbooks?

Since the file is coming in as .xls, is the creator's version of excel 2003?

Is it large? [> 5mb]?

How many sheets are in this workbook?

From my experience working with Excel a lot, there is a specific spot or cell in your workbook that didn't get terminated like normal when you exit a cell or press ENTER.

So answer those questions for me and see if you can't get the individual who created the workbook to re-create it mimicking all of the sheets and "Copy/Paste Values" the information over to the new sheet(s), save it after it looks right and send it to you.

 

[Roddy]

Hi Johnathon

tx for reply.

Its a 4 worksheet Workbook.

None of the sheets LINK to another.

Each is around 20 columns by 10 rows. Nothing too big.

I actually can't open it up, so I can't NOT hit ENTER anywhere....or I can't hit enter anywhere...

Its a total of about 28kb in size.

Rgds
Rod

 

[Johnathan Lyman]

Ok. It just sounds like there's some corrupted data or data that isn't terminated properly.

see if you can't get the individual who created the workbook to re-create it mimicking all of the sheets and "Copy/Paste Values" the information over to the new sheet(s), save it after it looks right and send it to you. Sometimes the only way to fix it is to get rid of it and start over, in this case.

 

[Roddy]

Hi Jonathon

sorry for tardy reply - time zone differences!!!

Another odd thing i just noticed - if I send the UNZIPPED file to my bosses email, open it up and unzip on his PC (still using Excel 2007) it opens perfectly....I can then edit and save my changes no probs.

So perhaps it's not per your thoughts - it seems Excel 2010 related?


Rgds
Rod

 

[Johnathan Lyman]

Hi Jonathon

sorry for tardy reply - time zone differences!!!

Another odd thing i just noticed - if I send the UNZIPPED file to my bosses email, open it up and unzip on his PC (still using Excel 2007) it opens perfectly....I can then edit and save my changes no probs.

So perhaps it's not per your thoughts - it seems Excel 2010 related?


Rgds
Rod

If, when taking the zipping out of the process it works just fine all the way through, you may just have to send them without containing them in .zip files. Some email scanners try to decompress and scan zip files and if they are safe compress them back [usually only bigger companies and governments do that; I know when I work with the US Gov't, their scanner won't let password-protected PDFs through, even though you don't need a password to open or print said PDF [just to edit]]

What program(s) are being used to zip/un-zip?

 

[Roddy]

Using both WIN-RAR and WINZIP.

tried your method as above and now I get a prompt to Open & Repair, but no matter which I try (extract data or repair) I simply get a blank excel spreadsheet.

got me licked. Any Excel 2007 in office (another 8 PCs) opens this file properly, my Excel 2010, nada, which is kind of a bummer as we are having ALL PCs upgrading to Office 2010 over next 2-3 weeks...or we WANTED to!

Tks for efforts to date and Rgds
Rod