Excel version compatibility problem?

[sue1201]

6 people are sharing a single Excel spreadsheet over the network. Unti
recently this was not giving any problems at all.

Some of them use XP Pro computers with newer versions of MS Offic
(2000, 2003) and some use older W98 computers with MS Office 97.

The spreadsheet is quite complex, with many named cells, lookups, lon
nested formulae with if statements, etc. However, there are n
user-defined macros and the structure of the sheet has not changed muc
recently.

But, recently, they have had trouble with error messages claiming tha
macros will not run, then Excel "loses" the current version, reverts t
a recovered version, and in the recovered version the list of cel
names is missing.

This is a rather sketchy description, I know. I am not personally a
expert in Excel, nor am I familiar with this particular design. But
wonder if the problem could be:

a. Using different versions of Excel to share the same sheet (althoug
versions of MS programs are supposed to be compatible)

b. I have heard that file sharing in Excel can cause problems (it's no
really multi-user) although these guys have been successfully sharin
for some time.

c. Could it be a Windows XP issue?

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance

Su

 

[Dave Peterson]

This doesn't sound good to me.

It sounds like the workbook is either corrupted (or very close to being
corrupt). I'd start recreating the workbook.

Different versions of excel handle corruption differently. Usually the newest
version is the most forgiving, but I've read posts that say that xl2k can open
some files that xl2002 couldn't.

I'd try to find one of those versions of excel that opened it successfully and
start recreating it there.

I've never used this, but lots of people say that OpenOffice can sometimes open
these kinds of workbooks. If you save it, maybe any possible corruption could
be deleted?????

(http://www.openoffice.org, a 60-65 meg download or a CD)

And if you wait too long (don't!):
http://www.officerecovery.com

======
I haven't had too much experience with corrupted workbooks, but the one time I
did, it was one worksheet in the workbook that was causing the trouble.

I don't know if it was the cause or just a coincidence, but this troublesome
worksheet had tons of formatting (like a ransom note!) and lots of comments--but
not too many range names.