Thxs, Bob.

You are apparently still under Win XP. My copy of the .xlsb file is in the
corresponding Vista folder.

Based on your reply, I had an idea: I deleted all personal.xls files,
including shortcuts, except for the one in the Office 12\Xlstart folder.

Then I opened a new document, opened Visual Basic & that personal.xls file,
still .xls, not xlsx, was there. I made a minor change in it (dummy change
would be OK.) As I saved it, in the project pane 'personal.xls' changed to
'personal.xls (persoal.xlsb)', implying the .xlsb file had been created.

I doubt that it really is a binary file & I have no idea why MS would want
to save the personal.xl* file in binary form or why they use the file
exension for binary files.

However, doing this got rid of the error messages, implying incorrect file
type &/or a corrupted file.

Thxs again, Peter K


"Bob Phillips" wrote:

The file type is xlsb and mine is in

C:\Documents and Settings\Bob\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART

--
---
HTH

Bob


(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)



"Peter K" wrote in message
...
I used to have in previous office versions an XLstart folder uinder the
Office10 folder, containing Personal.xsl as well as two templates,
sheet.xsl
& Book.xsl.

The templates apparently were moved with the 2007 installation to
C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates . (For simplicity, I'll
call this Pathxx\Templates.) The Perrsonal.xsl is in the Office12\XlStart
folder. In addition there appeares a Personal.xlsb (Binary?) in
Pathxx\Excel, the xlsb file being 50kB, compared to the xls file being 35
kB.
There are also several shortcuts to these files, I assume, some leftover &
redundant.

Anytime I try to open an Excel file, I get an error message: "Excel cannot
open file Personal.xslB because the file format or the file extensionis
not
valid. Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file
extension matches the format of the file." The same error has also been
given for the .XLS file.

Since I have another machine running Office 2007, I copied the .XLS file
from there. Since it works there, I'm sure it's not corrupted.

What is wrong & what is the correct file type & file location for
Personal.xls in Office 2007? (Unfortunately, no info in Excel help.)

(Both machines run under Vista Ultimate.)

Any advice will be appreciated.

Peter K