Opening Excel 2002 file in Excel 2000 problems

[Mark Christensen]

Hello,

I created a worksheet in Excel 2002 SP3. Nothing fancy, just columns and
rows with text and numbers. When I open it in Excel 2000, the following
warning box appears:

File error. Some number formats may have been lost.

It doesn't prevent me from opening the file in 2000, but I still don't want
users to get that message when they open it. I tried saving it as an Excel
2000 file but still got the same error when opening it in Excel 2000. I get
no warnings when I open it in Excel 2002.

Can anyone help? Thanks.

Mark

 

[Dave Peterson]

Each version of excel seems to be sensitive to different levels of corruption.
Usually, the newer versions can handle it better than the earlier version--but
not always.

You may want to try rebuilding the workbook to see if that helps.

If things get really bad...

Lots of people have praised OpenOffice.org for saving their data and code.

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

There are commercial recovery services. I've never used it, but you might want
to check into:
http://www.officerecovery.com

 

[Mark Christensen]

The file is not corrupt. It opens and displays everything correctly in Excel
2000, except that it displays this warning box (not an error box). I tried
renaming the file, converted the cells to text, but nothing is helping. Any
other ideas? Thanks.

Mark

 

[Dave Peterson]

I would have phrased it:

The file is not corrupt enough to bother xl2k, but it's corrupt enough to bother
xl2002.

But maybe your phrasing is correct.

Do you get that same message when you open the workbook on a different pc with
xl2002? Maybe it's xl2002 on that one pc that's causing the trouble.

 

[Mark Christensen]

I can open it without the warning in 2002 on another computer, so it's not
related to a specific computer.

What I did do was open it in 2000, save it as a new name, closed it and then
opened the new file name and the warning message did not appear, so I think
that will have to be my workaround - unless you can think of a more
permanent one. I appreciate the help.

 

[Dave Peterson]

If you could open it on another xl2002 pc, then I would have guessed that it was
related to that specific pc.

My guess is the original workbook had some corruption in it. Maybe the save|as
cleared it up (maybe not).

I'd keep my eye out for further propblems--either on that single pc or that
file.

I can open it without the warning in 2002 on another computer, so it's not
related to a specific computer.

What I did do was open it in 2000, save it as a new name, closed it and then
opened the new file name and the warning message did not appear, so I think
that will have to be my workaround - unless you can think of a more
permanent one. I appreciate the help.

 

[Mark Christensen]

Dave,

Just wanted to let you know that I figured it out. There were hidden
columns that I didn't remember. I took those out and now the file created
in 2002 opens without any warnings or problems in 2000. Thanks for the
help!

 

[Dave Peterson]

Hidden columns shouldn't affect excel that way.

I'd keep an eye out for future problems--Here's hoping you don't see any!

Dave,

Just wanted to let you know that I figured it out. There were hidden
columns that I didn't remember. I took those out and now the file created
in 2002 opens without any warnings or problems in 2000. Thanks for the
help!