Excel 2K XP compatibility error - help! 1

[GuardGuy]

Recently we upgraded several of our clients to XP Pro, while still retaining our use Office2K/SR1A & Office2K/SP3. My problem is that our XP Pro clients can no longer update links in Excel. The W2k clients work fine. I cannot find a Microsoft patch for this problem. When I open the Excel file, it asks:

"The workbook you opened contains automatic links to information in another workbook.  Do you want to update this workbook with changes made to the other workbook?"

(there are 7 linked files in this 4Mb Excel spreadsheet) When I click "Yes", I get the error:

"Microsoft Excel for Windows has encountered a problem and needs to close.  We are sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[JunglesMcBeef]

Hi,

Try opening the linked files before opening the file you want to open. Maybe if this works, create some code to automatically open these files before updating the links.

 

[PeterMoran]

Hi GuardGuy,

Some Ideas!

1. Is it possible to have your Excel XP save files as Excel 2K? I'm not sure where this option is, but I think it may be possible not to use the new XP features when saving the workbook.

2. You may have done this already, but if not, try replying NO to the Update Links request with a copy of your file, and then re-create all the links using XP and see whether that is OK for both versions. You may even find that if you re-create the links in Excel 2K they may be OK. I have found that re-creating the links has solved a similar problem, because in fact the links had been present for a long time and appeared to be created with even earlier versions of Excel.

Good Luck!
Peter Moran

 

[GuardGuy]

Thanks guys, still have the problem, but here's what worked and didn't work. I have recreated all the links to no avail. I have also did a "Save As Type" for all the files involved to put them all at the same version in case some of them had been created in an earlier version. Didn't work.

However, if I open all the linked files "before" the main file, then the link problem works. Hmmmm... Furthermore, I started isolating down "which" of the linked files may be causing the problem and lo and behold, it is only "one" of the seven linked files. It is a new Excel workbook created within the last 3 weeks using Excel 2K SR1A on a W2K station. From an XP station, using the same Excel 2K SR1A version, we did a "Save As File Type" Microsoft Excel 97-2000 & 5.0/95 Workbook (*.xls)" and the strange thing is that it doubled in size once doing that. Regardless of that anomaly, we still cannot link to it without first opening it.

We're getting closer... keep the ideas coming.

 

[pweegar]

Try cutting and pasting that one worksheet into a new workbook. Then re-create your links. Does that have any effect?

 

[GuardGuy]

Pweegar, that did it! Recreating the problem file took care of our link problem. The file as far as we know it was not corrupt, because all of our W2K clients could always use it with no problem - it was just our XP clients that could not use it. All we did to fix that problem file was copy/paste the info from the original workbook to the new one, using the same W2K client w/ Excel 2K SR1A (no XP involved here) and now it works with our XP clients as well. Hmmmm.... Anyway, thank to all who helped!

GuardGuy