A colleague has passed me a complicated XL2003 workbook with many sheets,
autofilters, split screens--it looks very pretty. When he (or I) attempt to
open it we get an expected 'Update Links' dialogue box. If we choose either
of the options it breaks and offers to send an error report to Microsoft.
When we pick 'Don't Send' we get a repeat offer. Then it presents the
complete file 'repaired' but with all formatting removed, that is stripped
back to 100% zoom, Arial 10pt, no colours in cells, standard column widths
etc, although all data and formulae appear to be there. There had been plenty
of links to other workbooks kept in the same folder, and the workbook has
worked fine in the past, but no links exist in the repaired file. The repairs
log helpfully tells me that the damage was too extensive to list.

This perhaps suggests two linkage problems but I cannot get into it to
investigate before the problem starts. Is there a way around the error
report, or are there elements of the error report I could read to be able to
tell my colleague that it is such-and-such a problem, or the file is
corrupted sorry?