"Too many different cell formats"

[bholeman]

I've run into this limitation on a large weekly report that I do. The unfortunate thing is that I've completed this week's report (after 12 hours of work) and now can't open the file. I'm using Excel 2000. Every time I try to open the file, I get this error. I've tried moving it into a ZIP file, setting it to 'read only', copying to a new file, and doing a 'view only'. Nothing works, I am not able to open the file. Any ideas how I can recover my work?

 

[PaddyD]

Hi - welcome to the board!

the underlying problem is probably this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;213904

...what version are you using?

 

[bholeman]

I'm using Excel 2000. I've tried to open it on NT4.0 and XP. I've been online with Tech24 for 4 hours now and they have been able to open it yet either, although a couple of time I thought we were getting close.

 

[Mark O'Brien]

The only solution I have found for this problem is to download openoffice.org 1.0 from the aptly named website:

www.openoffice.org

This is an Open Source suite. The spreadsheet application has different limitations to Excel and is able to open Excel files that even Excel cannot open. I'm not sure if Excel 2002's excellent file recovery feature would be able to open the file.

once you have the file opened in openoffice.org, you can manipulate it however you need to to allow Excel to be able to open the file.

 

[bholeman]

That worked!! Thanks for the help. I've been on the Tech24 help line for the last 6 hours and to this point, they've not been able to get the file open yet. I suspect they will eventually, but they haven't managed to yet. (I live in CMH too.)

 

[Mark O'Brien]

(I live in CMH too.)

You poor sod.
At least someone is sharing the same bad weather as me today.