Thanks for replying, JE, but I have bad news.
I tried to see if things were any better this morning on my computer at
work, which I believe does have SP1 (12.1.0 (080409)). I first tried to
open the first of the files that my home computer Excel couldn't open, and
got the same error message.
(For the record, and just to be clear, it goes about 33%, stops for
awhile, then displays the following error message: "Excel cannot open this
file. The file might have been damaged or modified from its original
format.")
I wasn't surprised that it wouldn't open the file, but wanted to try just
in case the SP1 fixes actually included being able to read the files that
claimed to have problems.
I then opened the one file that didn't have problems. I did autofilter on
the data, saved to a new file, closed, and reopened that new file with no
problem. I then renamed the tab and sorted by column (left to right sort),
saved to the same new file, closed, and now I cannot open the new file. I
get the same error message. So it doesn't even take doing the pivot table
to cause a problem. (I did try to do a pivot table, but realized the data
columns weren't in the right order, so I quit doing the pivot table to do
the sort.)
Most of the time, and as far as I can remember when actually saving the
file, I only had the one file open. For a couple minutes I also had a
second file (also huge) open, just to check which variables I needed in the
pivot table. (I recall reading that some folks had similar problems when
more than one file was open.)
[Last week I was working with a file with 2/3 the number of data lines
(71692 in the file, to be precise), created 2 pivot tables based on the
entire data set, then added lots of equations and graphs, and that file
saved and opens fine. Its size is 27.6 MB. ]
Also, I was mistaken about which version of Excel I have on the Windows
side of my work computer; it is only 2003, which I'm assuming is not recent
enough to do any kind of file recovery/repair on files written by 2008. I
will shortly go and find out from my IT folks if I can or should upgrade to
2007 (that is, if it will run on XP -- I have no idea -- and if our
department has a site licence).
In the meantime, I am dead in the water in working with my data. I would
surmise that this problem indeed has NOT been fixed in SP1 (and if it has,
I would like some guidance as to what I should be doing differently).
I'm ready and willing to send files if it'll help. Each file is about 23.3
MB, however.
I really appreciate the fact that folks who can do something about this
are reading this forum and trying to resolve these problems.
Thanks,
Carolyn
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