File error: data may have been lost

[Lindy]

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

If I send a simple Excel file from my work PC (Windows XP with Excel 2003/SP2) to my house via email to my leopard mail and then open it I get....

"File error: data may have been lost."

The file opens but I am not sure if its broken. File opens fine on Windows Office 2003 or 2007.

It seems after some small amount of trouble shooting that it caused by any Excel spreadsheet with a URL (www.microsoft.com) in a cell.

The spreadsheet used in my example is a simple three column spreadsheet (Request #, status, link to a sharepoint site).

 

[Pat McMillan]

I just replied to another thread on this:

Thank you for your reports. You are right that this did seem to break with
the 12.0.1 update. The error alert is just warning you (in a generic way)
that the hyperlinks are getting lost.

We are investigating this now. In the meantime, if it's possible to save the
file in Windows Excel 2007 as .xlsx that will cause the problem not to
happen.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Jeff Sun]

But unfortunately, Excel seems to hang at the error warning. Clicking "OK" to dismiss the warning just causes it to come right back up. I can see that the program is actually hung at the "Open" status notification. But there's no option other than to force quit Excel.

Opening the file so as to save it in another format is not an option.

 

[Pat McMillan]

What we've seen ourselves and heard from most customers who have reported
this is that after Oking the alert (sometimes several times) their workbooks
with links open normally. Have you tried Oking all of the alerts to see if
the file will then open, or do the alerts just keep firing indefinitely?

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Juergen Fenn]

What we've seen ourselves and heard from most customers who have reported
this is that after Oking the alert (sometimes several times) their workbooks
with links open normally. Have you tried Oking all of the alerts to seeif
the file will then open,

Yes, I have.

or do the alerts just keep firing indefinitely?

No, they don't.

But this is not quite reassuring if you depend on crucial data, is it?

Regards,
Jürgen.

 

[Barbara_K]

I'm having this same issue. I tried downloading 15 different excel files from my gmail account to my mac. About half of them gave me this error message when I tried to open them. However, all of the files have URL links in them. How do I know for sure if I am losing information or not?

Thanks,
Barbara

 

[Pat McMillan]

It's not easy to answer definitively if any other data has been lost. But if
the files opened without the alert in 12.0 and open with the alert in
12.0.1, then it's very, very likely that the only data that has been lost is
the hyperlinks in the workbooks. There has been at least one person on this
list who suggested that embedded pictures are also lost after upgrading to
12.0.1, but we haven't been able to reproduce that.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Jorge_Fiffe]

Hi Pat!

Any idea when this might get fixed in Excel. Is there a way to sign-up for a notifier when more info is available on a fix for this bug?

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Hi Pat!

Any idea when this might get fixed in Excel. Is there a way to sign-up for a
notifier when more info is available on a fix for this bug?

No idea when (or even if) this may be fixed. Keep watching mactopia to keep
up with the latest info. If you have autoupdate set you will be notified
when an update is available.

 

[Pat McMillan]

We will be fixing this in a future update. Unfortunately, I'm not able to
give you any dates as to when we will be able to fix it, but as Bob says,
please do set Microsoft AutoUpdate to check for updates automatically
(Help/Check for Updates), so you will be notified as soon as we do come out
with our next update. We are working hard on some important fixes, so we
will hopefully be able to announce something before too long.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Henrus]

I hope MSFT is aware that this problem is actually quite serious, and that on
my MacBookPro w/OSX 10.5.2 and Office 12.0.1, this bug is causing my computer
to crash. The mouse still works, but everything is frozen, and even
command-opt-esc will not work to bring up the "force quit" dialog. Dock
doesn't work, nothing. Only option is to do a hard shutdown. This happens
if i try to press the green "maximize window" button in the upper left corner
of the window of the spreadsheet that I am trying to work with after clicking
"OK" many times for each error message.

 

[Laroche J]

Henrus wrote on 2008-04-24 20:33:

I hope MSFT is aware that this problem is actually quite serious, and that on
my MacBookPro w/OSX 10.5.2 and Office 12.0.1, this bug is causing my computer
to crash. The mouse still works, but everything is frozen, and even
command-opt-esc will not work to bring up the "force quit" dialog. Dock
doesn't work, nothing. Only option is to do a hard shutdown. This happens
if i try to press the green "maximize window" button in the upper left corner
of the window of the spreadsheet that I am trying to work with after clicking
"OK" many times for each error message.

No help here about the Excel freeze, rather for the Force Quit. In your
situation it *sometimes* work to use Cmd-tab to switch to the Finder, and
then the Apple menu will become available so you can use Force Quit from
there.

JL
Mac OS X 10.4.11, Office v.X 10.1.9

 

[Henrus]

You were right! I just got the update this morning and it no longer crashes.
Strange that it only happened on some spreadsheets, but at least it is no
longer crashing. Thank you. Now just to fix the link problems.