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
    2023-12-04T20:03:19+00:00

    The question is whether any of the involved parties is currently trying to find a solution for this problem. It is quite possible the issue needs to be resolved by Microsoft and Apple working together. This sounds crazy I know but nobody is winning with this sort of problem going on and each party should be worried about the potential for some really important information to be corrupted. Microsoft, is your team on this?

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T19:04:32+00:00

    Only Apple/MS 365 knows what the deuce is going on. I am not aware of any resolution, only do it yourself workarounds to mitigate risk. My subscription is up soon, time to re-evaluate, although I don’t like Numbers. Be sure to routinely email your files to yourself and even add a version to Numbers. At least you’d have a point-in-time version.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T17:35:33+00:00

    I recently edited an excel file on iCloud from my iPhone. The next time I tried to open it, I received a message indicating that the file was corrupt. I've tried all of the suggestions provided in this forum as well as several online excel file repair tools. NONE of these worked - file is still corrupt. This file has 2 years of critical data that is now apparently gone. It's very concerning to see that this is apparently a known issue that has been happening for a long time, has affected many people, and yet, there is still no resolution (at least that I could find). I'd like to hear directly from Microsoft as to what the root cause of this issue is and why there isn't a resolution yet? Or if there is a resolution, what is it?

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