I have a client with a large number of Excel XP spreadsheets that they email
out to their customers on a monthly basis. Every month they open each sheet,
modify a couple of numbers and hit the Send button. After installing Office
2003 they discovered a problem. When they opened one of the Excel XP
workbooks, the email header information was correct. They changed the numbers
as usual, sent the mail and closed the workbook. Excel asked if they wanted
to save the changes and they said Yes. When they open the sheet up again the
email header information is blank.

I spent some time experimenting with it and found that I could prevent the
loss of data by doing the following steps:

Open the original Excel XP format file.
Save As <the same file name <yes to overwrite
Change the numbers
Send Mail
File Save
File Close <Answer NO to the prompt to save changes

When you open the file again the email header is still there along with the
changes but Excel will prompt to save on close again (and again...)

This is obviously some kind of file format conversion problem. Has anyone
else run across this and do you know of a way to really upgrade the files so
that the users do not have to work around the problem anymore?

Jeff Mcbride
DaVinci Digital, LLC