3

How can I fix my Excel files? Many of them show this error message:

We found a problem with some content in . Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes.

They open with Open Office without problems!

The files have been created in Excel 2010, and saved on a NAS drive

Error message

NB: I must use Excel though. I tested with both Excel 2010 and 2013

NB2: This question did not help, unfortunately

phuclv
  • 27,773
Jess Stone
  • 780
  • What version of Excel are you using? – CLockeWork Dec 02 '13 at 11:58
  • After creatinga copy, does clicking YES, resolve the problem? If Excel is saying there is a problem with the files, there likely is a problem, its either a malformed cell that Excel does not understand. What program ( and its version ) created these files? – Ramhound Dec 02 '13 at 11:59
  • Set Visual Basic for Applications in Office 2010/2013 installation? – STTR Dec 02 '13 at 12:02
  • I tested both with Excel 2010 and 2013 – Jess Stone Dec 02 '13 at 12:18
  • 1
    This sounds like the files were created with Open Office, which means if there is a bug in Open Office, a malformed cell could indeed cause trigger the corrupt flag in Excel. – Ramhound Dec 02 '13 at 12:40
  • 1
    Or there could be a bug in MS Office. It's hard to say just from decribed behavior. You may save that file in xml-related file and use text editor to view, if there is something wrong with it's structure. Post your file somewhere and give us a link, if that's possible. – week Dec 02 '13 at 12:49
  • the files have been created in Excel 2010, and saved on a NAS drive – Jess Stone Dec 02 '13 at 13:49
  • 1
    Old question but it was bumped so I'd like to point out you could hold down the CTRL key while right-clicking the file to open it in safe mode, and possibly be able to open it even though some data may look corrupted. – KEK Feb 14 '17 at 14:00
  • Go under help and about. Do you have all the service packs and updates installed for office? Both those version had at least 3 service packs. – cybernard Jul 21 '18 at 13:43
  • you still didn't answer the does clicking YES, resolve the problem? question – phuclv Mar 09 '19 at 11:23

2 Answers2

1

Excel supports various formats including OpenOffice ods and OpenOffice supports even more formats. So try opening the file in OpenOffice then save the file as xlsx, xlsb, xls, mht, htm, ods, dif, dbf, slk, xlw, xml... and reopen it with Excel and see. Some other alternatives are Gnumeric and WPS office

If your file doesn't have any VBA (which probably doesn't because you can open and view it normally with OpenOffice) and you can sacrifice some formats then you can also save it as csv file which will least likely result in an error

If none of the above works then you have the last solution:

  • Creating a new spreadsheet in Excel
  • Open the each sheet of the file in OpenOffice, press Ctrl+A then press Ctrl+C
  • Switch to Excel, create a new sheet and press Ctrl+V
  • Finally copy any VBA code if necessary
phuclv
  • 27,773
1

Saving to binary (xlsb) solved a problem with some contents in my case. Seems like some text conversion goes wrong while saving to xml (xlsx).

phuclv
  • 27,773
was
  • 121