Office 365 iOS App Corrupted Excel File

Anonymous
2023-03-18T18:37:50+00:00

Hi,

I'm hoping someone can help me with 2 xlsx files that have been corrupted.

I use iCloud to store my documents, I finished working on the 2 files in question on my MacBook in the morning and then later in the day successfully viewed them (not modified) on my iPhone using the Office 365 app.

When I came to open the files again, they are unable to be opened on any device using either numbers or excel. I have tried on my iPhone, MacBook and a Windows 11 PC. The error message is:

"Excel cannot open the file 'ABCDEF.xlsx' because the file format or file extension is not valid. Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file."

I have tried changing the file extension to xls. I've tried to open and repair the files using Excel on Windows however that hasn't worked either. I've used a couple of trial versions of recovery software and the preview shows the first sheet is there but the remaining sheets aren't which are vital to the spreadsheet.

Does anyone have any ideas or experience of this issue? I've noticed the timestamp of last saved has changed to the date and time I opened them on my phone. I'm not sure why Office365 resaved these files without me making changes or asking me.

Thanks

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | iOS

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-04-07T19:55:30+00:00

    Also having the same issue with 2 xlsx files. Opened with Excel on iPad from directly from iCloud as I’ve been doing for years and now it corrupts everything I open. I’ve used two paid recovery services and they only managed to salvage some of the data(5 out of 11 tabs) and as fate would have it those are the ones with less important information. The very important information was not restored. This is really frustrating as iCloud is supposed to be the back-up and now it’s malfunctioned with no option to fix it as far as I can tell from the Microsoft and Apple sites.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-04-06T22:43:10+00:00

    Same for me. Only started happening in the last two weeks. Happeing for me on excel AND word. so annoying. lost 2 days work on my PhD proposal.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-04-06T14:50:04+00:00

    OK, so it solved itself on my machine.

    After opening up an excel document on the IOS version of excel, it saved it to 66kb and made it an Open XML document vs excel after I made one slight edit.

    It was saved to iCloud overwriting the xlsx extension I had originally on the file (which normally I only edit on my Mac).

    I read on another post that someone solved the issue by using Numbers to open the file. So I opened the corrupt file (from iCloud folder) in Numbers and then chose 'Revert to'. It somehow found the version I had previously in a Cloud cache file from the day prior (which was the copy I had made the last edit) and it opened fine in Numbers. I then exported to an Excel file and placed it in the same iCloud folder as the original file (with a different name - I appended 'fixed version' to the filename).

    Now I can open that file in Excel....but here's where it got interesting. After opening that file, I was given a warning about opening the file and I ignored the error and it opened fine. But then I went back to the old 'corrupt' file (which I renamed back to an xslx extension) and that version opened with the slight edit I had made yesterday.

    So, not sure what bug this is in excel but after going through that exchange, I can open both the repaired/fixed file and the original file which is no longer corrupt. Until they sort out this mess, I won't open anything in IOS.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-04-04T11:01:40+00:00

    I have the same problem as others. Thank God I had a back up as the corrupted file is unrecoverable trying all the suggested methods!

    @Microsoft this makes the iOS app completely unusable! What’s the plan to fix it?

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-04-03T08:37:29+00:00

    I have used Numbers on Mac that proposed me to recover older version and I found the non corrupted file...good workaround

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