Can't open some old Excel 2004 files

[Gunni_S._Frederiksen]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Some weeks ago I installed MS Office Mac 2008 Home & Student Edition (Danish version).
Everything went well and all looked fine until I wanted to update the data in my power and gas consumption spreadsheets. Two of the files I could not open. That is they are visible as Quicklook, but when I double click Excel just blinks as if it opens the file and immediately closes it again.
Does anyone has an explanation, but best of all a work around??
Yours
Gunni S. Frederiksen

 

[Pat McMillan]

Have you run the updates to 12.1.1? Also, could this be the problem you're
seeing:

Is there any chance that the sheet names in your workbooks contain forward
slash or back slash characters? If so, the 12.1 update caused a problem that
prevents Excel from opening such files. Although those characters are
invalid for use in sheet names, Excel should still be able to open those
files (and remove the invalid characters). If you have access to an earlier
version of Mac Excel, or to Windows Excel, you can open those files and
remove the invalid characters from their sheet names. If not, we're hoping
to release a fix soon that will allow Excel to start opening these files
again.

Thanks,

Pat