Cannot create, open, or save Excel:mac 2004 workbook (.xls) files

[Mark Frautschi]

I am recovering an iMac DV from a disk crash.

It has a new hard drive, new OS X and Office:mac 2004 installations,
with all patches and updates:

iMac DV 256 MB, 30 GB, Mac OS X 10.4.2, Office:mac 2004

The machine has two user accounts, one I just created, and one that I
recovered using Dantz Retrospect 6.5.

Classic 9.2.2 and Office:mac 2001 are installed on this machine.

Everything seems to work fine with the new account, however, with the
recovered account:

=======================================================================
(1.) When I create a new spreadsheet I get the following error message:

Microsoft Excel cannot open or save any more documents because there is
not enough available memory or disk space.

o To make more memory available, close workbooks of programs you may no
longer need.

o To free disk space, delete files you no longer need from the disk you
are saving to.


=======================================================================
(2.) When I open an existing spreadsheet I get the following error message:

'name of file.xls' could not be found.

Check the spelling of the file name and verify that the file location is
correct.

If you are trying to open the file from your list of most recently used
files on the File menu, make sure that the file has not been renamed,
moved or deleted.

=======================================================================

Things I have tried:

Using the Removal Office tool to remove all previous versions of
Office:mac, and Office:mac 2004 and all (nonuser) files. Reinstallation
with all updates.

Deleting
~\Library\Preferences\com.microsoft.Excel.plist
~\Library\Preferences\Microsoft\com.microsoft.Excel.prefs.plist
~\Library\Preferences\Microsoft\com.microsoft.Office.prefs.plist

Both of the above.

Deleting and then replacing above with corresponding files from the
working account.

Note: The Retrospect restore resulted in many files being set to Read
Only. I did not import preference files when I did the restore, beyond
the contents of

~\Documents\Microsoft User Data\

in which I changed all files and subfolders to read/write and verified
the user's ownership.

I performed the recovery by booting in safe mode, and replacing the
contents of

~\Documents\Microsoft User Data\

with the backup.

All of the above preferences files, and other files I spot checked, are
read and write enabled.

Any next steps, fixes, workarounds, etc., would be greatly appreciated.


Sincerely,


Mark Frautschi

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Have you tried to repair disk permissions with the disk utility?

 

[Mark Frautschi]

Bob,

Thanks for your letter.

Yes, I tried that, as well as using several of TekTook Pro's 4.0.5 's
utilities.

Should have mentioned this.

Mark

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Why do you have 2 versions of Office? You should probably remove Office 2001
and do all your office work in Office 2004. Try removing it and see if it
works properly with only one version of Office installed. Do things work
properly if you open the document(s) from the application's file menu?

 

[Mark Frautschi]

Bob,

Thank you for your continued interest in this issue.

I left the old version of Office on that machine because it accessed
different fonts, and because it did not have the issues with opening files.

I have solved the problem (solution below) and updated the fonts, so I
will delete Office 2001 immediately.

I decided that the
~\Documents\Microsoft User Data\Office 2004 Identities\Main
Identity\Database
file was corrupt.

I may be unfair in my accusation. "Corrupt" may merely mean that it
contained some of the references for the original account, and that when
I recreated the account, something was different (directory paths,
permissions, for example) and Office:mac 2004 was not finding
preferences or .dot files in the right place or the right owner.

Healing the corrupted file was probably too much work and too risky, so,
I made copies of all of the user's data except the abovementioned
Database file, and exported all of the e-mail, calendar, etc. that I
could from Entourage.

I then completely deleted the user account and all files.

I recreated the account (same name, etc.) I moved back all of the files
except Database, imported the Entourage, restored as many settings as I
could remember (I did not re-import any .plist files) and so on.

My customer is at last happy.

I wish I knew what the "smoking gun" was, but I could not find any way
to edit the database (Bare Bones Edit Lite could barely open it) or
repair it. (Microsoft does not offer a Database repair or editing
utility as far as I could tell and the third party offerings did not
receive solid reviews so far as I could tell.)

The problem, for all I know, could also live in a .plist file.


FWIW, I search of the smoking gun I also looked for clues in open files:

I closed all Office Apps, then I opened Terminal and did a

$ lsof | grep Microsoft > t1.txt

I next launched Excel and repeated the above, saving to another file,
t2.txt:

$ lsof | grep Microsoft > t2.txt

and differenced the two files

$ diff t1.txt t2.txt

The rather large list of files that Excel opens persuaded me that
starting over as I indicated above, might be best, rather than
investigating the permissions and owner of each file.

So, again, the problem seems to have been solved, by brute force, not
elegance.

Thank you for your help.

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Mark, some comments below:

I decided that the
~\Documents\Microsoft User Data\Office 2004 Identities\Main
Identity\Database
file was corrupt.

Maybe, but this has NOTHING to do with Excel. It is the place where
entourage stores email, calendar, addresses, etc.

I may be unfair in my accusation. "Corrupt" may merely mean that it
contained some of the references for the original account, and that when
I recreated the account, something was different (directory paths,
permissions, for example) and Office:mac 2004 was not finding
preferences or .dot files in the right place or the right owner.

Healing the corrupted file was probably too much work and too risky, so,

In Office 2004, it's pretty easy. Just launch entourage with the shift key
down and a database utility will open instead. You then have the option to
verify, rebuild and compact the database.

I made copies of all of the user's data except the abovementioned
Database file, and exported all of the e-mail, calendar, etc. that I
could from Entourage.

I then completely deleted the user account and all files.

I recreated the account (same name, etc.) I moved back all of the files
except Database, imported the Entourage, restored as many settings as I
could remember (I did not re-import any .plist files) and so on.

My customer is at last happy.

I wish I knew what the "smoking gun" was, but I could not find any way
to edit the database (Bare Bones Edit Lite could barely open it) or
repair it. (Microsoft does not offer a Database repair or editing
utility as far as I could tell

Yes, they do, see above. Yes, the contents of the database are proprietary,
and contain a whole bunch of entourage's stuff.

and the third party offerings did not
receive solid reviews so far as I could tell.)

The problem, for all I know, could also live in a .plist file.


FWIW, I search of the smoking gun I also looked for clues in open files:

I closed all Office Apps, then I opened Terminal and did a

I'm clueless as to Unix. However, did you also launch activity monitor and
notice Database Daemon? This is part of office and monitors the database
file mentioned above in order to display alarms and alerts.