Excel 2007 - Unreadable content when opening files
 

Hi guys,

I have a user on the netwerk running windows 7 and Excel 2007.
On a lot of files he tries to open from a network location he receives an error 'unreadable content'. He is requested to repair the file; if he does so he looses some layout details etc...
This happens not always... Somethimes he can open the same file without problems by retrying.
The user claims the problem also occurs on files witch he has created himself.

Office and Win7 are up-to-date. Problem remains...

Peter

There may be a number of causes for this problem.
It is best if the user does not repair the file, as this will ruin all the formatting. Excel file repair process is not well implemented in my opinion. typically the file does not have a problem, the cause is something else

Can you answer these questions:
1. Is it any specific type of file, eg an XLSM (with macros), and XLSX with lots of conditional formats, charts or data validation, an XLS spreadsheet?
2. Do the files contain links to other files, or ODBC links?
3. Have they been opened in Excel 2010 and saved? Sometimes old 2003 and earlier files have a massive increase in styles and formats due to this issue.
4. Is the user opening the files from Windows Explorer by double-clicking or from Excel File Open ?
.

Then try these steps:
1. Check for this ShellStreams DLL You may receive "Unreadable Content" when opening files from within Excel 2007, if you have a shellstreams.dll file
2. First open those files on another machine and see if the problem persists. If not then the problem is isolated to the user's environment.
3. Disable all add-ins and see if the problem recurs. If not, then re-enable add-ins one by one until the offending add-in is found.
Excel Repair Toolbox can save a recovered data into new XLSX files. The heuristic search algorithm allow finding data for any damaged file. Fore more https://www.repairtoolbox.com/excelrepair.html