I have several Excel files saved on a "Flash Drive", and have been using them
on a very regular basis. Today, as I tried to open a few of them, they opened
just fine (in other words, no Error Message was shown at the time of
opening). But, once the file was opened, all of the worksheets were just
filled with strange symbols
(%&$#") instead of the actual words and numbers I had put in the cells. I
tried opening the 10 Excel documents that I had all saved on the Flash Drive,
and about half of them open perfectly, and the other half have all of these
symbols all over them. In using these files in recent days and months, I
have never gotten any type of error message when saving them. Has anyone had
this problem? Even though the files open perfectly, they only have symbols
in them which means they are worthless and I will have to start over. Thank
you for any advice you can provide.

This is a known fact to some users, never open and save Office files on
removable media, sooner or later they will get corrupt. It's too bad MS
don't have any documentation about this but when you use Excel, it will save
tmp files on the hard drive and you have discovered as have many other users
before you that it will corrupt the files if you save on a removable drive.
Just use removable media like floppies, CDs and flash drives to copy files
between computers but when you do the work do it on the hard drive, then
copy over to the removable media to transport them only.


--

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

http://nwexcelsolutions.com


"LauraH" wrote in message
...
I have several Excel files saved on a "Flash Drive", and have been using
them
on a very regular basis. Today, as I tried to open a few of them, they
opened
just fine (in other words, no Error Message was shown at the time of
opening). But, once the file was opened, all of the worksheets were just
filled with strange symbols
(%&$#") instead of the actual words and numbers I had put in the cells. I
tried opening the 10 Excel documents that I had all saved on the Flash
Drive,
and about half of them open perfectly, and the other half have all of
these
symbols all over them. In using these files in recent days and months, I
have never gotten any type of error message when saving them. Has anyone
had
this problem? Even though the files open perfectly, they only have
symbols
in them which means they are worthless and I will have to start over.
Thank
you for any advice you can provide.