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Unreadable content in Excel File

Answered Unreadable content in Excel File

  • Wednesday, May 02, 2012 9:17 PM
     
     
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    We have new pc's with Windows 7 and older PC with XP.  We are using an excel file to track our market animals and dollars by farm.  It has never happened until the past 30 days.  We are getting the following error message.  "Excel found unreadable content in Market.xls.  Do you want to recover the contents of this workbook?  If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes."  When we click Yes to recover the data, it doesn't recover all data and we have to rebuild the file.  Unfortunately our server hasn't been backing up the data in a timely manner and we don't even have a file to recover unless someone remembered to through a backup on a separate part of the server that noone touches.  Can anyone explain what is possibly causing this so we can try to prevent it from happening?

    Thank you.

    • Moved by Bob_BaoMVP Thursday, May 03, 2012 5:37 AM (From:Excel for Developers)
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  • Wednesday, May 02, 2012 9:53 PM
     
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    This error sometime occurs because a xlsx get rename to xls.  Other times it occrs when 2003 tries to read a file with contents that it doesn't recognize from 2007 and 2010.  I would install in th emachine that stil have the 2003 the compatibility pack so 2003 can read 2007 files.

    See this webpage

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg132972.aspx

    jdweng

    • Proposed As Answer by CSharpNoob2011 Thursday, May 03, 2012 12:58 AM
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  • Thursday, May 03, 2012 12:58 AM
     
     
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    As per Yoel's answer, your window XP is probably running older versions of excel (97-2003) and the new computer is using 2010.

    Please mark Joel's answer as answered and useful.

     
  • Thursday, May 03, 2012 4:49 AM
     
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    Hi Texas Farm,

    Welcome to MSDN Forum.

    As Joel said, your issue is possibly a compatibility issue. According to your description, I think your issue is more like an Excel end user issue; it is suitable to repost the issue on Excel Answers Forum. The correspond link is: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/Excel

    The experts there are more familiar with the usage of Excel and may give you more suggestions or workarounds.

    Thank you for your understanding.
    Have a nice day.

    Best Regards,
    Quist

    Quist Zhang [MSFT]
    MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

     
  • Monday, October 08, 2012 4:32 PM
     
     
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    Such error must be excel file corruption if it's true

    I would advise you next application http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/excel.html to solve problem out