Unable to open spreadsheet (2000)

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I have a spreadsheet that is available to a number of people on a shared drive on a network.

Suddenly, last week, no-one can access the spreadsheet and we get an error message that says:
Cannot open [file name]. The document may be read only or encrypted.

There is no encryption on the file, no password, is not marked as read only, nothing.

I am having trouble finding any references to similar problems with Google so thought I would come here. What references I have found refer to Excel 2007 rather than Excel 2000. There are no Excel 2007 installations.

I cannot rename the file, cannot move the file, cannot get into the file. If I try any of these things I get the “access is denied” message that refers to the disk being write protected or full. Neither of these cases is true.

Does anyone have any ideas of how to rescue the data?

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Does the free utility UNLOCKER help?

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Hans,

Thanks. Unlocker was unable to ‘unlock’ as it ‘gound no lock handle’, but offered to move, delete or rename it. I tried the rename. That worked. But I am still unable to open the file. I tried to rename it back to the original and Unlocker could not do that until next reboot. Unfortunately, the machine holding the file is the server so there can be no reboot until after hours.

Attempting to move the file (to my USB stick for instance so I can take the file to a 2007 machine) has also been fruitless.

But it demonstrates that there really is no lock on the file. Just some sort of corruption.

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That doesn’t sound good. I’d wait until the server has been rebooted – perhaps you’ll be able to copy / move the file then. If not, the file is probably corrupt beyond recovery.
In the meantime, do you have a snapshot feature turned on on the fileserver? If so, you should be able to try various previous versions.
Otherwise, a recent non-corrupt backup is probably your best bet.

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Thanks Hans,

I will try the backup method and report back

Report Back: Restore from backup was successful. Thanks for your help and suggestions.

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Just a question: Is this file by any chance in Shared mode?

If so, your problem proves the point I’m about to make: Do NOT use Excel’s shared workbook feature to enable multiple users to access a file at the same time. Excel is not the right application for this. It is at best unreliable and you risk loss of data.

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Pieterse,

Thank you for that heads up. Yes I know all about the Shared Workbook from previous experience and feel the same way that you do.

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