Unable to open excel file

  • Thread starter Thread starter PeteD
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PeteD

Hi,

I have a situation earlier that I can't open an excel
file anymore. And I noticed that there was another file
without extension and no association. When I double-click
the file, it was my excel file. Is there any explanation
on what happened to my file? Was the unusual file, the
backup file?

Can somebody enlighten me?

Thanks
PeteD
 
I'm not sure why you couldn't open the .xls file anymore--did you get an error
message?

But 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).

You may want to disable the AV and see if that helps. Or try saving to the
local harddrive--or both.
 
Dave,

I can't remember the error anymore as I have deleted the
file when I was able to open the file without the
extension and save it as something else. The file still
remains. I'm just wondering now how could this file be
created and maybe reproduce for better understanding and
avoid this in the future.

Could this file be an excel recovery file? I've read some
articles that excel recovery files are with .xar
extension and they normally resides locally. The
abovementioned file was located on the shared folder in
the file server together with the original file.

Thanks
PeteD
 
That file is easy to reproduce--just save a workbook.

But the bad news is you don't see it (or notice it) unless something goes wrong.

If you open a giant file (10-15 meg) and then open windows explorer and go to
that folder, then do a save in excel. Quickly swap back to windows explorer and
you'll see it get used.

(I think in some versions of windows, you may need to hit F5 to refresh the
windows explorer window. Hit it a couple of times if you don't see the filesize
(in detail view) grow.)

The .xar is different. That functionality was added in xl2002.

You can see your folder that is used by using excel's
tools|options|save tab.

But this is the file that's saved every xx minutes (user selectable). If excel
or windows crash while you're making changes, then this .xar file stays in that
folder.

The next time you open excel, it'll check that folder for any of those files.
If it finds some, you'll see a prompt to determine what you want to do next.

If you see one of the .xar files hanging around (or just edit a workbook in
excel), you can copy it to a different folder, rename it to .xls (or just
file|open the .xar) and it'll behave just like an excel file--'cause it is one.

I use this as my folder to contain my .xar files:
C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\

I think that's the default location for me. It's buried deep enough that I
don't go looking here. And You saw the funny named file in the same folder as
the original workbook--so I don't think you saw the .xar file.
 
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