Fixing Excel (2003 / .xls) Files

[Old_Geezer]

When I was employed I used to keep updated, a personal spreadsheet using the company's Office suite. At one time the Excel I bought for home was identical to that used at work, but as the years went by I saw no reason to update an expensive suite for home, whilst (eventually) the work software did get replaced with a new version. Consequently the spreadsheet in question changed from being .xls to .xlsx.

When the company inflicted a change of work conditions on the staff which as far as I was concerned was an utterly unacceptable imposition and I told them what to do with their job, I was left with just my own 2003 Office suit to edit the spreadsheet with. But 2003 does not recognise .xlsx.

(There is a macro that is supposed to allow one to read the format but I've tried installing it twice and whilst I can not recall the details it failed dramatically both times; so that is not an option.)

I tried various free suites and they all do not fully support .xlsx. They all claim to read it ok and eventually I settled on OpenOffice to read the file. But, unfortunately, none of the free ones are as slick of the MS version, so eventually I opted to try to use Excel again. The free ones write to .xls so there ought to have been no remaining issues. But there is.

Excel insists it has found a problem with the file and it may be unsafe to open. It opens it anyway and for the most part all seems well, but as I have experience a few times today, cut & insert paste of a row results on the thing crashing out. The recovered file, when one reopens Excel, is awful. All the formatting is wrong, text only.

Is there anything out there one can use to fix a dodgy saved .xls file such that Excel 2003 accepts that it is fine ?

At present I'm putting up with it but I'm contemplating a massive copy & paste job into anew spreadsheet. But not looking forward to trying that or even confident it would accept the pastes anyway.

[pinkyboyid]

Have you tried downloading and installing the compatibility pack update for previous versions of MS Office:-

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3

[Old_Geezer]

Hi. I believe that was the macro I referred to. The one that doesn't work. But thanks for the suggestion.

[VHG]

>>>The one that doesn't work.

Yes it does I have installed it a number of times.

[Old_Geezer]

I'm not kidding. It doesn't work on mine.

But the issue is really with fixing the file.

[Tuvok]

I was going to suggest Open Office but see that you don't like it.

You could however use it and save it as an excel file - you should get the option of xls or xlsx

You could also try online conversion sites

This is a good site http://www.online-convert.com

[Old_Geezer]

Aye, that is the problem. It was saved a while ago now as .xls since the free ones don't support the ability to write to .xlsx. But Excel is finding fault with it: and whilst simply adding has proven to be no issue, it seems if an error is spotted and one wishes to cut and insert paste, it crashes out.

Conversion sites may have been ok at the start, and I suppose still an option. But would mean having to re-do all the changes I've made of late.

[pinkyboyid]

It could be that your MS office installation is experiencing some type of malfunction and interfering with the compatibility installation amongst other file open errors.

If so, you could try installing / reinstalling the Office 2003 Service pack 2 and then reapply the compatibility update.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=23424

[Tuvok]

Another option is save it as a sylk file - that is a format for opening files from one spreadsheet in another spreadsheet program.

It may just get rid of whatever the problem is.

You could open in Open Office, save a sylk then open it again in OO and save as xls, or open it in Excel.

[THECORBYLOON]

Does this help?https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Open-an-Office-Excel-2007-workbook-in-an-earlier-version-of-Excel-868e7f65-7757-4caa-830d-a8933a5941cd

[THECORBYLOON]

Try again https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Open-an-Office-Excel-2007-workbook-in-an-earlier-version-of-Excel-868e7f65-7757-4caa-830d-a8933a5941cd

[Old_Geezer]

I did wonder about an MS Office reinstall. I'd need to dig the disks out from somewhere. Knowing my luck it'd stop everything including Outlook !

Thanks for all the suggestions folks. I'll look into it when I can.

[pinkyboyid]

If you can find the disks you can initially try a repair operation which will retain all of data / settings, instructions here:-

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/821593

[Old_Geezer]

Think I must have missed your suggestion henri. Thanks; but I ended up recreating the whole spreadsheet again from scratch. Cheers