Compatibility Issues betwee Excel 2003 and Excel 2007! BEWARE!

[Pitchblend]

It is possible that at least 1 person is aware that I have been struggling with data integrity issues when translating files from Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 for the last several weeks.

One issue that we have identified today is that if the 2003 Workbook contains named ranges, each range name must be checked to make sure they the name does not confict with reserved range names in Excel 2007+.

Range names that are causing problems
DAT1, DAT2, DAT3 .....
Jul04, May10 ....

You get the idea. Sometimes you will get a notice of minor loss of fidelity when saving 2003 to 2007 - but don't count on it!

Perhaps one of our highly valuable but under-appreciated MVP's or MODERATORS can expand on this issue?

Currently, we are thinking that all named ranges in all Excel 2003 workbooks will need to be reviewed. Perhaps someone out there can suggest a better fix - maybe an audit tool?

 

[shg]

Those names are valid cell references in Excel 2007+, and so cannot be used for range names. IIRC, later versions of Excel add an underscore to the front of the name.

 

[Pitchblend]

When excel renames DAT to _DAT it has been causing #REF! errors. I will try to provide a concrete example. In the mean time, thank you for your help.

 

[Pitchblend]

Is there somewhere that I can find a list of reserved names in Excel 2007 and Excel 2010?

Unfortunately, we (my department) are in a transition state in which I am working with all 3 versions of excel.