Why is Excel unhappy with this XL file?

Question

Please take a look at http://www.windward.net/temp/Bug_1465.xlsx - I can't find anything wrong with it. I opened it in the OpenXML SDK 2.0 app and ran validate and it said it was good too.

But Excel does not like sheet1.xml. Any idea why? (Excel doesn't say why, it just says it doesn't like it.)

thanks - dave

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Answer 1

Hi Dave, the purpose of the Open Specifications forums is to provide support for the Open Specification Documentation.  In absence of additional details about the underlying cause, I suggest you post your question in the Excel for Developers or Excel IT Pro Discussions forum, or engage Excel product support to assist you with troubleshooting. If you discover that the problem is due to a problem with a specification we are happy to assist. Please provide a reference to the document and section that you believe is the cause.

Thank you.

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Josh Curry (jcurry) | Escalation Engineer | Open Specifications Support Team

Answer 2

Hi Josh;

Here's my problem - according to the spec, the OpenXML SDK, etc., this file should be good. It's hard to point to something when everything appears correct. However, I was able to create a good comparison to show the quandry. If you look at http://www.windward.net/temp/Bug_1465_good.xlsx - according to XML Spy, every file in these 2 XLSX files is identical. Yet the first gets an error and the second does not.

If all of the XML is identical, how can one be good and the other is not?

thanks - dave

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Who will win The International Collegiate Programming Championships?

Answer 3

Hi Dave,

The repair details in Excel are misleading here since the problem is not in the sheet per se, but in your workbook part which refers to the sheet. The problem is in workbook.xml on the line:

<workbookView firstSheet="1" activeTab="1" />

The parameters should refer to the index values, which are zero based, so the correct values for the first sheet would be:

<workbookView firstSheet="0" activeTab="0" />

Since you only have the one sheet, the pervious setting was trying to activate a non-existent sheet.  Since "0" is the default value anyway, you could remove the entire tag in this case. It only makes sense if you have more than one sheet and you want some sheet other than first sheet to be active on open/load.

Questions like this which deal with actual implementation failure or errors in Excel could be better served in the Excel forum or through an Excel support case.  So for future reference, I would suggest you come find me or the other Excel team members on those forums. 

I hope this helps.

Richard 

Sr. EE for Microsoft Office Commercial Support (Excel)

Answer 4

Thank you.

And will do. (I was previously pushed by the Excel forum to post here but I think the division between the forums as I understand it now is ask here if it's what does this setting mean and Excel if the question is why is X happening.)

thanks - dave

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Who will win The International Collegiate Programming Championships?