Massive problem: Excel has found unreadable content.

deadlyliquidx

New Member
Joined
Feb 6, 2015
Messages
27
Good Morning All!
I have having a major issue with excel.
Certain files keep saying Excel has found unreadable content, do you want to recover.
And then when it repairs it takes away all of my formatting!
This wouldn't be a problem if it didn't take a way my drop downs as well and I have a lot.
And it keeps happening...
I have exhausted all resources trying to find the core of the problem.
Here is what the message says after I repair.

Repaired Part: /xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml part with XML error. Load error. Line 2, column 0.
 

Excel Facts

What does custom number format of ;;; mean?
Three semi-colons will hide the value in the cell. Although most people use white font instead.
that is almost certainly a read error off your hard drive. if you have another copy somewhere, go back and use it to cut your losses. sorry for the bad news. you might be able to undelete an old copy but excel is very good at writing over its awn files for some reason.
 
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No it happens in alot of other computers in the office.
Others have fixed this problem, I just need to know where to go to fix it.
 
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I wonder if you can help, from reading an old post I think you had the same issue I'm having now but I can see if you resolved it.

When I open a workbook with a Macro I get this message " We found a problem with some content in 'Workbook_Name.xlsm'. Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can?"

Strangely, when I open the file on another User account on the same PC it works ok.

Any help would be appreciated
 
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If you're on one of the Office 365 Insiders subscriptions, this was a problem with a recent Insiders builds. I suffered severely from this problem. You should check for an update, since my problem went away after an update last week.

In the meantime, select Cancel for recovering the file, then select a different cell or change the active sheet, and save again. Usually just changing sheets or even the active cell was enough to allow the save without getting that annoying message.
 
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Thanks Jon, It's not an Insider sub and I seem to have the latest update,
Pro Plus 2016 Version 1801 (build 9001.2144)
my problem look to have started on 8th Feb.
I cant do as you suggest,
this started happening to all spreadsheet that with VBA macros. When you accept the option to recover it destroys the VBA and you are left with only the Worksheets. The same workbooks will work on another user account using the same PC.
 
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I will echo Jon on this point. The bug hit the insider builds for about 18 days before it was fixed. The first N times it happened, I simply Ctrl+Alt+Delete and lost my work.

But 9 time out of 10, the workbook *could* be saved. Choose another cell. Try to save again. Most of the time, it worked.
 
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On my machine it affected any and all files. With or without VBA, with or without pivot tables and regular Tables, old files or new files being saved for the first time. Very frustrating, but usually the file could be saved if I changed the selection first.
 
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Try exporting your userforms and saving your modules and class modules into text files. then you can restore the "repaired" version. i had an excel crash event recently on a perfectly good userform which even stepped (F8) correctly, but refused to run. exported and deleted. saved, then imported and it has behaved ever since. no idea why
 
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Not Ideal, but a solution that worked. Using the Fresh Start option in Defender, I reinstalled Windows while keeping all my Documents. All Workbooks with Macro's now work perfectly.
 
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