Formatting error from Excel version 9.0442 SR1 to Version 11.5612.

[Guest]

I 'am trying to open a spreadsheet in version 11, that has been edited in
version 9. The edited version includes some comments. When I try and open
the spreadsheet in version 11, the first message I get is "File Error, data
may have been lost". From here I have to click the 'OK' on the error message
5 times before the spreadsheet opens. Once it has opened, none of the
comments are available.

When closing the spreadsheet the following message appears; "Microsoft
Office Excel Recalculates formulas when opening files last saved by an
earlier version of Excel"

Can anyone please tell me if there are any known issues between these two
version or if there are any settings that I should be changing in order for
this to work.

 

[Dave Peterson]

The format for xl97 (version 9) to xl2003 (version 11) is the same.

So any of these versions should be able to open any workbook created in the
others.

The only time I've seen this type of error is when the workbook is corrupted.
It sounds like the workbook is just on the cusp--xl2003 can still open it, but
loses information.

Each version of excel seems to be sensitive to different stuff. For the most
part (although not always), the newer versions have better luck opening these
corrupted files.

You may want to try opening the workbook in various versions (xl97, xl2k,
xl2002, and xl2003) to see if you can recover the comments.

You may want to try OpenOffice. Some people have said that OpenOffice can open
these corrupted files even better--then save there & close, and try reopening in
excel)

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

And 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

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your help Dave, but it opens in other versions of Excel. I'm
pretty sure that the workbook is not corrupted.

Have there been any fixes etc released for Excel specifically?

 

[Dave Peterson]

There have been updates to every version of excel (IIRC). I'm using xl2002 SP2
(service pack 2).

But one of my points is that each version of excel handles corrupted workbooks
differently. That's the reason I was guessing that it's a corruption problem.