Excel 2010 - Error opening files

Hi Everyone,

I have problems opening MS Excel files (that were made/saved in Excel 2003 compatibility format).

When I open them with Excel 2010, I get an error message saying the files cannot be opened normally and Excel will try to recover the file / contents...

And when it opens, it says, the content was recovered but some data may be lost!!

Now, I have two issues in the opened files:

Some of the cells show strange values and I have checked the cell format. For example, a cell with a "Time" entry shows up as 1205423 instead of 1.00 (in seconds) or random numbers like that.. Then same issue is seen in other cells too with random numbers / values...

Second, I had made some formulas and calculations in the original excel file.. but after opening with Excel 2010, all those columns are completely lost!!!

Any idea how to fix this?

I know the files are fine and there is no problem with the files themself. I can open them fine with Office 2007.

Thanks in advance.

 

I don't know why that isn't working, but here's what I would try: open the files in 2007, save them in 2007 (don't write over your existing files unless you want to live dangerously), then try opening the 2007 files in 2010.

 

Thanks for your message.

That's what I thought of doing, but I have something like ~750 files! Is there a way of doing something in a single batch?

For some reason, the files seem to have been saved in compatibility mode. The person who made those files just mentioned to me that even though it was done with Excel 2007, the "save" was set to "2003" compatibility mode (and I guess this was because there were others using XP / Office 2003 still)....

Though why would it completely take out some columns / rows with data?

Cheers.

 

Sorry, don't know how to help you with that.

In the future though, your 2007 user can just save in 2007 format and the users running older versions should install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. I think it installs automatically from Windows Updates but if not, go here: Download: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats - Microsoft Download Center - Download Details

 

Thanks once again.

Yes, I am suggesting that to my colleagues as well. Meanwhile, the problem is, there is a compatibility pack already installed. In fact, the words documents were saved with that.. though with just the xls format (not the xlsx format).

Still, I don't get why some cells carry wrong formatting / values... neither do I understand why some excel files couldn't be recovered fully resulting in loss of complete data sets!

I am now trying to see if I can do some crowd-sourcing among my colleagues and give each a few excel documents and ask them to open > save in 2007... though some files are still showing up strange!!!

I am also trying to go back to the PC with Office 2003 and see if I can save in a more recent format and see how it is. Though with the number of files in hand, I don't think that's an optimal solution!

Thanks anyway... Cheers.

 

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