# Excel 2003 won't open some files on shared drive



## gramps98 (Jul 12, 2011)

In the last couple of weeks my machines running Office 2003 (Excel 2003 in particular) will not open "some" spreadsheets that are stored on a shared drive on our LAN. I can e-mail the sheet to a user and they can open it. They can copy it to their local machine and open it. They can double click the item on the shared drive, cancel the operation, open Excel, then open the "recovered" version of the document. They cannot simply navigate to the shared location and click on the file to open it. Well...sometimes it will open after 30 minutes or so. Other times after a long while the Excel window just closes and the list of files on the shared drive remain on the screen. There is never an error code either.

The only commonality is that Office 2003 is installed on these machines. Operating systems are XP Pro 32 Bit and 64 Bit with SP3, and Vista Business 32 Bit SP2. All machines have atleast 2 Gig of RAM and at least Dual Core Processors running at 2.6 GHz or above. The files being opened are all about 8meg each. The file conversion utility is on all of the machines (we do run Office 2007 as well and there are no problems with the '07 machines).

I installed a trial copy of Excel 2010 on the one Vista machine and there is no problem opening the files. That points me back to thinking that it has to be something with Excel 2003. I looked at the setting "Ignore Other Applications" in Excel 2003 and the box is already unchecked on all of the machines. Uninstalling and re-installing didn't do any good.

This problem only occured within the past week so I'm told and it only seems to affect these particular files (by the way, I copied the entire folder to another drive on the network and no resolve). I suspect that it was a Microsoft update that broke things. Does anyone have an idea of what the problem might be?

gramps98


----------



## DariusSupport (Apr 5, 2011)

try installing the office compatibillity pack from MS, if the extensions are docx then they are being formated for 2007 and 2010 and won't open for 2003 without the pack. if you think an update did this then check the membership and permmsions on the folder(s) to make sure that they did not change along with the updates.


----------



## gramps98 (Jul 12, 2011)

Thanks for the response, but all of that has been looked at. I even checked to see if there was another version of the compatibility pack, and even uninstalled and re-installed it on one of the machines.


----------



## DariusSupport (Apr 5, 2011)

try to open the files on your 64 bit machines, if alll of these can open the files then that's your problem. For the 30 minute wait issue check the shared drive for space, the server for space in general and wether it has a heavy load of access to it. could be a server ram issue also


----------



## gramps98 (Jul 12, 2011)

As stated in my original post, this happens on Windows 7 64 bit machines, XP Pro 32 and 64 bit machines, and the one Vista Business 32 Bit machine. I have also copied the files from the original location and placed them onto a totally different NAS location. The shared drives are ½ TB with 120GB free. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the Excel component on one of the machines. I'm trying to avoid uninstalling, wiping all traces of Office '03 from the registy, and re-installing it. Note in my original post that I have installed 2010 and it works just fine on the Vista machine, so I think it will work on the others. Also, I installed Open Office (Calc) so these 5 users can access these particular files in the meantime. That's working, but I'd still like to have my users use Excel because it is what they are accustomed to.


----------



## DariusSupport (Apr 5, 2011)

go to the shared folder with a machine that does let you see the file, turn on see hidden files in that folder. Are there a bunch of .tmp hidden files in that folder?


----------



## sherclark (Jul 15, 2011)

Greetings,

I have the same issue as described in the original post. "Some" Excel spreadsheets will not open in Excel 2003 from network drive. Several machines are affected by this. 2 different servers are involved. Started happening end of last week, I believe after an update but not sure. Below are the steps I have taken without any success:


1. Successfully opened file in Office 2010
2. Successfully opened file from the local machine
3. Tried Microsoft fix, article id 833041 without success.
4. Researched other sites without any leads


Hopefully someone will know a fix for this?? 

Blessings!


----------



## gramps98 (Jul 12, 2011)

Praise the Lord! I'm not the only one. I mean that in a good way. For this to happen, it must have been an update. I use WSUS to send out my updates. That's the only logical thing that I can think of that could have happened.


----------



## DariusSupport (Apr 5, 2011)

found the problem, uninstall KB2502786 and kb2541025 updates


----------



## gramps98 (Jul 12, 2011)

I found and uninstalled KB2541025 but can't find KB2502786. Problem persists. I rebooted the machine. It found the update and wants to install it again. I have not done so as of yet. Any other possibilities?


----------



## DariusSupport (Apr 5, 2011)

I was looking around for more help and ran accross this: http://forums.techarena.in/ms-office-support/749154-2.htm pay special attention to ms file authentication about half way down the page. The two KB's i mentioned before ended up being the solution for two other admins I know, but the link above has a few more suggestions in it.


----------



## gramps98 (Jul 12, 2011)

Just to make sure, I tried the same thing on an XP Pro 64 Bit machine. Again, I found KB2541025, but not KB2502786.


----------



## gramps98 (Jul 12, 2011)

Stick a fork in this one! All hail King DariusSupport! I deleted KB2509503 and the problem is resolved! I even reinstalled KB2541025 because it kept coming back wanting to be installed. It's still working. This is on the Vista Business machine, but I'm confident that it'll work for the XP machines as well.

Thanks for your diligence.


----------



## sherclark (Jul 15, 2011)

Gramps,

I just did what Darius suggested and it was successful.

At first I was not able to find the 786 one either. I did the following steps:

1. Found and uninstalled 025

2. Looked for 786, could not find

3. Rebooted

4. Tested opening the file unsuccessfully

5. LOOKed for 786 again and found it

6. Uninstalled 786

7. Rebooted

8. Tested file successfully!


Hope this works for you. I am very appreciative for Darius's post. Our admin is now unapproving from the update server and I have my fingers crossed that it will carry over to the other systems.

Let me know if it works for you!

Blessings!


----------



## DariusSupport (Apr 5, 2011)

for more information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2541025
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2509503
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2502786


----------



## badlands73 (Jul 29, 2011)

I just wanted to say a big Thanks! to Darius for this solution. I have been searching all over for an answer to this one. I deleted KB2509503 from the system that was having issues and now it works great again.


----------

