OMG Excel!!!!

Mars

Mars

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This is driving me crazy!!

All of a sudden a couple of months ago the excel file we use in our business started giving errors while saving. Ok its corrupt I think.
I roll back to an earlier version of the file. After a week or so THAT is giving errors.
Now my Master copy of the file says that there is unreadable content in the file and it needs to be repaired. I repair it, save it as a new file and within a couple of days (without any editing) its telling me that there is unreadable content again! :WTF:

I cannot rewrite this workbook again it will take weeks. If I can figure out what part of the file is messed I can redo that part. Is there any way I can pin point the problem in a 40+ sheet workbook?
 
sorry. no bananas. microsnot sold you crap. and now your weeks deep stuck in it with no-one to call.
 
Use OpenOffice instead. Since I did that for my wife never a problem (her spreadsheet also has > 40 sheets) and they have a habit of killing their machine with the powerbutton at night before closing the spreadsheet.

Never lost a file or even a row of data in 4yrs.
 
40+ sheets in Excel?? This is what is wrong with the world. Use a database with a real programming language, excel cant handle that sort of data, its just not good enough!
 
Madman88 said:
I cannot rewrite this workbook again it will take weeks. If I can figure out what part of the file is messed I can redo that part. Is there any way I can pin point the problem in a 40+ sheet workbook?
Click to expand...

Do a "Save As", open the new file and see if you still have the same problem.

Otherwise I would suggest that you contact Microsoft, they might be able to send you a fix, or a tool to fix it with.
 
phiber said:
40+ sheets in Excel?? This is what is wrong with the world. Use a database with a real programming language, excel cant handle that sort of data, its just not good enough!
Click to expand...

LOL ... thats my situation with my wife. Actually busy moving the whole spreadsheet to PHP/PostgreSQL this weekend. Just to open one document eats about 512MB of RAM! Then she has a document per month (for the last 8yrs) so you can imagine the fun of her opening 6months documents on a 3800+ Sempron.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Use OpenOffice instead. Since I did that for my wife never a problem (her spreadsheet also has > 40 sheets) and they have a habit of killing their machine with the powerbutton at night before closing the spreadsheet.

Never lost a file or even a row of data in 4yrs.
Click to expand...

I really tried open office. Calc just doesn't have the oomph to do what I need. Also the lack of vb is a bit of an issue.

90 % of the sheet is formulas. 10% is data.

I have tried to change it to a database, but I just don't have the database knowledge or the time to learn it.
 
Madman88 said:
I really tried open office. Calc just doesn't have the oomph to do what I need. Also the lack of vb is a bit of an issue.

90 % of the sheet is formulas. 10% is data.

I have tried to change it to a database, but I just don't have the database knowledge or the time to learn it.
Click to expand...

Maybe now is a good time to learn something about databases? In the long run, it will save you your sanity.
 
are there any web links in the workbook?

has a formula perhaps been removed or edited to something else?

have you viewed all the formula?

yes it is possible to view all formula in a sheet without clicking cell by cell.
 
Nod said:
Maybe now is a good time to learn something about databases? In the long run, it will save you your sanity.
Click to expand...

Ok, Ive decided to bite the bullet and convert the whole shebang to access. Is that a good option?

ChilliGirl said:
are there any web links in the workbook?

has a formula perhaps been removed or edited to something else?

have you viewed all the formula?

yes it is possible to view all formula in a sheet without clicking cell by cell.
Click to expand...

There are no web links, and I have done a basic overview of all the sheets. There are massive amounts of formulas in each sheet.

My other idea is to split the sheet into weeks and admin, so it will basically end up being 6 workbooks with about 7 sheets or so in each. The thing with that is that the sheets will be linked to each other and I have not had happy times with that.
 
Madman88 said:
This is driving me crazy!!

All of a sudden a couple of months ago the excel file we use in our business started giving errors while saving. Ok its corrupt I think.
I roll back to an earlier version of the file. After a week or so THAT is giving errors.
Now my Master copy of the file says that there is unreadable content in the file and it needs to be repaired. I repair it, save it as a new file and within a couple of days (without any editing) its telling me that there is unreadable content again! :WTF:

I cannot rewrite this workbook again it will take weeks. If I can figure out what part of the file is messed I can redo that part. Is there any way I can pin point the problem in a 40+ sheet workbook?
Click to expand...
Once it gets to that state it's always going to corrupt at some stage. "Save As" just copies the error, even if you use a different format.

The only thing that I've found to work is to copy each sheet out into a new spreadsheet individually and then save... You might have to fix links to external spreadsheets if you do this.
 
Madman88 said:
Ok, Ive decided to bite the bullet and convert the whole shebang to access. Is that a good option?



There are no web links, and I have done a basic overview of all the sheets. There are massive amounts of formulas in each sheet.

My other idea is to split the sheet into weeks and admin, so it will basically end up being 6 workbooks with about 7 sheets or so in each. The thing with that is that the sheets will be linked to each other and I have not had happy times with that.
Click to expand...

Could be a broken link to a workbook somewhere (could have been broken by accident if the cell is not protected)

Have you ever tried pressing ~ & the alt key at the same time while in the workbook?????

PSSSSS - DO NOT HAVE HEART FAILURE!!!!! when you see what it does....
 
ChilliGirl said:
Could be a broken link to a workbook somewhere (could have been broken by accident if the cell is not protected)

Have you ever tried pressing ~ & the alt key at the same time while in the workbook?????

PSSSSS - DO NOT HAVE HEART FAILURE!!!!! when you see what it does....
Click to expand...

Lol. It shows the formula's. I know this. I have checked this. for each sheet. Thats part of the issue. I cannot see anything wrong. Every time excel says it has removed the part of the file with the problem but I cannot see anything missing. the workbook still works perfectly, other than failing to save half the time.
There are no links to external workbooks right now.
 
Usually happens with external links but the improved connections manager in 2007 seems to have improved this.

If you have hectic amounts of formulae in the workbook, try setting it to manual calculation. I've had Excel become a bit unstable at times if it frequent calculates huge amounts of cells.

Also, if 90% is formulae & 10% data and you duplicate it for every month, why don't you separate the data, calculations and outputs e.g. put your data in Access (doing just the tables are easy), have a single, separate sheet or add-in for all the calcs (consider using MS Query) and monthly reporting/output workbooks. Then you just have to pump your monthly data into Access and duplicate the output workbooks - should cut down the size and probably make it a bit more stable.
 
Download ASAP Utilities and use that to create a new copy of the file. Also using ASAP, remove all objects etc. It's an awesome Excel utility that no should work without.
 
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