Compatibility

[Charles Leung]

Hi there,

I received errors in opening Word and Excel documents sent from two
different friends.

The message for Word is: Word cannot open this document. The document might
be in use or might not be a valid Word document.

The message for Excel is: 'abc.xls' cannot be accessed. The file may be
read-only, or you may be trying to access a read-only location. Or, the
server the document is stored on may not be responding.

As far as I know, the two documents were created from Windows platform. Is
it due to compatibility? Does anyone get any clue? Thanks.

Charles

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

There isn't an inherent compatibility issue, especially not with Word, which
has used the basic same file format since Word 97. (And the only reason I
don't say the same for excel is just because I don't know much about excel).

Wild guess--you're using Entourage? Is it possible you have it set not to
completely download big messages?

 

[Charles Leung]

I saved the two documents once with Windows Office 2003 and sent them back
to my PowerBook. It was successful to open and read with Mac Office 2004.
I ran compatibility check and it said there was no Tradition Chinese
proofreading installed for Word document and special character may not be
displayed properly for Excel one. I wondered it was due to language of MS
Office. Do you think it is valid? My friends might be using Traditional
Chinese edition.

There isn't an inherent compatibility issue, especially not with Word, which
has used the basic same file format since Word 97. (And the only reason I
don't say the same for excel is just because I don't know much about excel).

Yes, I'm using Entourage 2004. I don't know how to set message size.

Wild guess--you're using Entourage? Is it possible you have it set not to
completely download big messages?

Thanks,

Charles

 

[Charles Leung]

I have one further finding...

I got an email (with Entourage) which supposed to have 2 Word documents.
However, I received only one and got the same message on opening the
document -- Word cannot open this document. The document might
be in use or might not be a valid Word document.

It was interesting that I got both documents with Apple Mail and opened them
without problem. With this particular scenario, I suspect the problem may
be from Entourage.

FYI, I'm running OSX 10.4.1.

Charles

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hmmm, check this: in Entourage, go to Tools | Accounts, open up the Account
and select Options. There's a checkbox for "partially download messages
over X size". If you have that enabled, then Entourage may not be
downloading the entire attachment, so when you try to open it, it isn't
really there.

In those mysterious icons to the left of the Entourage message listing, a
gold envelope ripped in half means "only part of this message has been
downloaded".

DM

 

[Charles Leung]

It was checked. I'll keep an eye on messages to see if there is any change.

Thanks,

Charles