Excel Spreadsheets Keep Being Renamed

[David]

Hi,

I working on a small network, and users keep reporting
that excel files are missing. When we go to the location
of the original file, we find that it has been renamed
with a (seemingly random) alphanumeric name, and is no
longer recognised as an excel spreadsheet.

If the file is renamed (and as an excel spreadsheet) it
works fine, and no data appears to have been lost.

We recently upgraded from Server 2000 to Server 2003.
Adding to the mystery, staff in our I.T. Section do not
appear to be effected.

Does anybody know why this is happening, and how we can
stop it?

Thanks.

 

[Dave Peterson]

When you save a file, excel will save it as a temporary file (8 characters, no
extension). Then if that save is successful, excel will delete the original and
rename this funny named file to the original's name.

You see the results when something interferes with this process.

A couple of things that get pointed at are antivirus software and network
problems (hardware or permissions).

Maybe you could disable the antivirus software (temporarily) to see if that
helped.

If the problem goes away, then visit your local AV site and see if they have
updates. If it doesn't, I'd think I'd try to get my IT department more
involved. (well, unless you're already the IT department!)

====
and if the user does a file|open and opens that funny named file, it'll work ok.

(You could add an extension of .xls, too and then double click on it in windows
explorer.)