When I try and open some of my Excel files, I get a message that Excel is unable to find the files; strangely, it has no problem finding and opening other files. This phenomenon is not limited to one folder. However, these same unfindable files are found and opened with a copy of Open Office or if I open those spreadsheets at the Zoho site. I am using a AMD 64x2 Mobile Processor on a Gateway Laptop w/2 MB RAM & Windows XP Media Center, SP-2. I am using Microsoft Office 2003 SP-3. I have not tried unloading and relaoading Office yet. In the Options submenu of Excel and under the General Tab, "Ignore Other Applications is Unchecked".

Hi cgoodlein,

I think your problem is similar to mine as i was using MS Office 2003 SP-3. One day i was working on US calling project and the database could not be accessed at all. There are two sub problems to this one either the file that you are trying to open is advanced version than MS office 2003 or the Excel file format is the problem. The general Excel file extesions are ".XLS" ifthe Excel file extension is other than this it would be ".XLSX" that means you either need ms office 2007 or search for ".xlsx" to ".XLS" converter generally you will get such converters on www.torrentz.com

I would first establish if these files are saved in the Excel 2007 format by either sending them via email to someone with Excel 2007 or putting them on stick memory, then taking them to a machine with Excel 2007, opening the files, and saving them in the 2003 format--if done via email, have the person send the files back to me saved for sure in the Excel 2003 format

You could also open them with Open Office and save them in the Excel 2003 format, if this is possible with Open Office or any other program other than Excel that will work

I'm suddenly having the same problem. It started about two weeks ago here at work. We can't open files that are deep in the network. The pathlength is not so long, however, that we should be unable to open the files.

We can open these "unopenable" files if we move them to another folder "less deep" in the network or to i.e. the desktop, or we can open them with Open Office from the original location. There should not be any possibility of file incompatibility since no one here uses Office 2007 yet. Anyways, I made the original files less than ~6 weeks ago and the original locations, and they opened and saved fine at that time. Very strange.

Well, I checked again and the character count in the path for at least one of the files in question was 267 characters, so the filename is too long. I shortened the filename so that the pathlength is 198, and it now opens. Is there any way around the pathlength limitation?

Something else I would investigate is the possibility a Microsoft Patch has upset something

I would try a System Restore back to a time when things worked

Patches can cause real issues if they are NOT built on weekly Patch Updates (usually coming overnite on Tuesday