[Paul Gooda]

Hi Guys,

I have a group of users whos speadsheets seem to get corrupted quite often.
The offending sheets cannot be opened in excel, it hangs at the start of
opening the file,cpu goes upto 100% and just sits there almost like its in a
loop.

The file can be opened in excel viewer. I notice that the workbook also
changes the modified date in explorer as soon as its opened? If I use any
excel workbooks I have, the modified date is only changed when I save the
document,

Any ideas as to why the modified date is being changed on opening? I think
this could be what is causing the corruption.

Thanks in Advance for your help

[Dave Peterson]

When you open the file, excel always changes that modified date. If you close
without saving, it'll be changed back.

But I don't have a guess about the corruption problem--but I don't think you'll
find that it's related to the date stuff that you've noticed.

Paul Gooda wrote:

Hi Guys,

I have a group of users whos speadsheets seem to get corrupted quite often.
The offending sheets cannot be opened in excel, it hangs at the start of
opening the file,cpu goes upto 100% and just sits there almost like its in a
loop.

The file can be opened in excel viewer. I notice that the workbook also
changes the modified date in explorer as soon as its opened? If I use any
excel workbooks I have, the modified date is only changed when I save the
document,

Any ideas as to why the modified date is being changed on opening? I think
this could be what is causing the corruption.

Thanks in Advance for your help

--

Dave Peterson

[Paul Gooda]

Cheers Dave, yes you are correct. The modified date does change and go back
if I dont save.

Just need to sort out the corruption problem, and why the file keeps
corrupting.

Cheers

Paul


"Dave Peterson" wrote:

When you open the file, excel always changes that modified date. If you close
without saving, it'll be changed back.

But I don't have a guess about the corruption problem--but I don't think you'll
find that it's related to the date stuff that you've noticed.

Paul Gooda wrote:

Hi Guys,

I have a group of users whos speadsheets seem to get corrupted quite often.
The offending sheets cannot be opened in excel, it hangs at the start of
opening the file,cpu goes upto 100% and just sits there almost like its in a
loop.

The file can be opened in excel viewer. I notice that the workbook also
changes the modified date in explorer as soon as its opened? If I use any
excel workbooks I have, the modified date is only changed when I save the
document,

Any ideas as to why the modified date is being changed on opening? I think
this could be what is causing the corruption.

Thanks in Advance for your help

--

Dave Peterson

[Dave Peterson]

Saved from a previous post:
===========================

I think you're gonna have to do some detective work.

Maybe it's the workbook, maybe it's really excel.

If it only occurs with this one workbook, then I'd bet it wasn't excel. If it
happens with other workbooks, too, then maybe Help|Detect and repair (or
reinstalling) would help.

If it's only this one workbook, then maybe it's the workbook that's corrupted.
It seems like each version of excel is sensitive to slightly different stuff.
(xl2k could have trouble, xl2002 may not--in fact, lots of people have reported
that xl2002 can open files that xl97 or xl2k couldn't.)

Maybe you could try to find a copy of xl2002+ to see if opening|saving it there
would help.

And if it is a corrupted workbook, you may want to try openoffice. Lots of
people have said that it's recovered workbooks that excel couldn't.

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

If the file is really important, there are commercial recovery services. I've
never used it, but you might want to check into:
http://www.officerecovery.com

=============
Some more info.

Sometimes, it's not the workbook itself that's causing the problem.

If you start excel in safe mode:
close excel
windows start button|Run
Excel /safe

The file|open your workbook,

does it work ok?

If yes, then maybe it's the file that holds the toolbar customizations that's
damaged.

Close excel
windows start button|search (or find)
*.xlb
(Look for hidden files in hidden folders, too)

Rename all of them to *.xlbOLD.

Start excel normally and see if it works ok.

If yes, then dump those *.xlbOLD files and customize your toolbar at your
leisure.

If there's still problems, then close excel and rename the *.xlbOLD files back
to *.xlb (no harm, no foul!).

If you want to read more...

Chip Pearson has some notes on how to diagnose startup errors at:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/StartupErrors.htm

And Jan Karel Pieterse has more notes at:
http://www.jkp-ads.com/Articles/StartupProblems.asp

Paul Gooda wrote:

Cheers Dave, yes you are correct. The modified date does change and go back
if I dont save.

Just need to sort out the corruption problem, and why the file keeps
corrupting.

Cheers

Paul

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

When you open the file, excel always changes that modified date. If you close
without saving, it'll be changed back.

But I don't have a guess about the corruption problem--but I don't think you'll
find that it's related to the date stuff that you've noticed.

Paul Gooda wrote:

Hi Guys,

I have a group of users whos speadsheets seem to get corrupted quite often.
The offending sheets cannot be opened in excel, it hangs at the start of
opening the file,cpu goes upto 100% and just sits there almost like its in a
loop.

The file can be opened in excel viewer. I notice that the workbook also
changes the modified date in explorer as soon as its opened? If I use any
excel workbooks I have, the modified date is only changed when I save the
document,

Any ideas as to why the modified date is being changed on opening? I think
this could be what is causing the corruption.

Thanks in Advance for your help

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson