Excel modifying files when opening

[Stephen]

I trying to find out exactly why Excel appears to edit files every time it
opens them (although the modified date remains the same). I've done some
hunting around on the web and seen various suggestions, such as the last
username is changed, but since it is only myself who has opened the file
this is not the case. I thought it might be to do with the automatic
calculations, and so I tried turning this off, but again this made no
difference.

Essentially, unless I select to save my file, I do not want Excel to change
it from the file I had before I opened it. Is there any way to do this?

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

What indication do you get that the file has changed?

 

[Stephen]

I've used a MD5 checksum generator to verify that the file definitely
changes when opened and closed.

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

This is about the only information I could find on it:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;826741&Product=ofw
Excel Changes Modified Date and Time When You Open the Workbook

Don't know if this is a source of the change or not.

 

[Stephen]

Thanks,

This may be what is causing the problem. Seems strange though that Excel has
decided to store the date and time and reset the timestamp on close (without
a save), but blatantly still modifies the file in some way.

Don't suppose anyone knows if there's a setting in Excel along the lines of
"Leave my files alone on startup"?