File Error: Data may have been lost. No macros or external links.

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paul2302 - 06 Jul 2007 09:38 GMT

Hi,
I have a large (about 20 sheets) workbook with lots of VLOOKUP and
INDEX functions but no macros and no links to external sources.
However i occasionally get the "File Error: Data may have been lost"
error and the same group of cells will have their formulas replaced
with #N/A. there are a lot of interdependencies so it could be just
one row of cells causing the problem.

once i do get this message the file can never be opened correctly. i
open and modify the file about 15 times a week and get the error say
twice a week. i must then copy the formulas over from an old version.
the problem could be occurring on loading or saving, i'm not sure.

my guess is that perhaps because of the size of the sheet it could be
trying to calculate the problem cells before the sheets on which they
depend have loaded? any other ideas? if it is this, how can i solve
it? the problem seemed to get less frequent when i broke down the most
comoplicated formulas into smaller chunks in several cells.

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Dave Peterson - 06 Jul 2007 11:55 GMT

It's only this workbook that's having trouble, right?

If it's only this one workbook, then maybe it's the workbook that's corrupted.
It seems like each version of excel is sensitive to slightly different stuff.
(xl2k could have trouble, xl2002 may not--in fact, lots of people have reported
that xl2002 can open files that xl97 or xl2k couldn't.)

Maybe you could try to find a different version to see if opening|saving it
there would help.

And if it is a corrupted workbook, you may want to try openoffice. Lots of
people have said that it's recovered workbooks that excel couldn't.

(http://www.openoffice.org, a 60-65 meg download or a CD)

If the file is really important, there are commercial recovery services. I've
never used it, but you might want to check into:
http://www.officerecovery.com

> Hi,
> I have a large (about 20 sheets) workbook with lots of VLOOKUP and
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> it? the problem seemed to get less frequent when i broke down the most
> comoplicated formulas into smaller chunks in several cells.

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Dave Peterson

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paul2302 - 13 Jul 2007 16:06 GMT

hi,

sorry late reply. as a trial we saved the workbook both as an xls and
an xlsx. when the problem next came up it did so in xls and not in
xlsx. however although the xlsx did not give an error, it simply made
the problem cells blank. no idea what is wrong as it only happens
occasionally. Rubbish Microsoft!

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Dave Peterson - 13 Jul 2007 17:27 GMT

I don't have anything more.

> hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> the problem cells blank. no idea what is wrong as it only happens
> occasionally. Rubbish Microsoft!

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Dave Peterson

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