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Issue with Excel - "Excel file format is not valid"
Excel file format is not valid. Please help as unable to open Excel.
I think I found the solution.
If you disable the office dropbox add-in the problem doesn't seem to occur anymore. You can still save to dropbox via file explorer making it redundant anyhow.
to do this, open excel, go under file, Choose "Options", and navigate to "add-ins".
From there locate the Dropbox Add-in and right click, select "disable".
Should stop it from being an issue.
20 Replies
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- Rich
Super User II
You need to provide more information about the problem you're having. Are you opening Excel files from the Dropbox folder on your desktop, or the Dropbox website? Does the problem only occur with files in your Dropbox folder, or elsewhere on your computer as well? Have you dragged one of the problem files out of your Dropbox to your desktop and tried to open it from there? Mac or PC? Office version? etc. I am trying to open Excel from both but neither are opening. Desktop error says "file format is not valid". I edited the document on 2 September with no issues.
- Jane
Dropbox Staff
Hey flew,
Hmmm... Mere guess here, since I've encountered the same error in the past.
If it's an .xls file, you'll probably need to modify (:repair) the file extension to .xslx. If you run a google-search, you'll easily find some articles that will walk you through the process as well.
If this persists, would you mind including a screenshot
After checking throughally it seems when this is done in Excel 2016, it saves as a CSV format but with a .xlsx file extension. Making Excel think it's corrupted when it's just under the wrong file extension. Seems to be an issue exclusively with using the dropbox saving function in office.
Can someone else test this out? I am unsure why this is happening this way. The workaround is simple, save locally instead of with dropbox. But feels like a bug someone should be made aware of.
Try renaming to .csv and doing save as outside of Dropbox. Currently dealing with an identical issue and found it was still in it's original format when used the dropbox saving function in office 2016. Making it seem corrupted when it was just something in the process changes the file extension but not the actual format.
- Rich
Brandos wrote:
it saves as a CSV format but with a .xlsx file extension
I'm seeing the opposite. When I do a Save As, specify Dropbox as the location and select CSV as the file type, it's saving the file in the XLSX format with a .csv file extension. Saving to the Dropbox folder directly, without using the Save to Dropbox functionality, the file is saved correctly.
So it seems it's a problem with the save as function in general in excel not just any particular file format. The function of doing a save as to a different format is not working correctly when saving to dropbox.
Wish we could get some support members to look at this and give us an idea on why this is happening and what fix there is if any.
- Jane
Merging several posts with the same description.
Do we have any new information on this issue. I don't see any solutions being presented. All I have is workarounds.
- The issue happens when a user uses the dropbox office 2016 add-on to do a save as function in excel 2016 directly into dropbox.
Example: Someone sent me a .csv I open it in excel 2016 but would prefer it be saved as .xlsx . If I choose save as the dropbox option is displayed at the left. with the add-on. If you select this and change the file format it saves to dropbox in the original format and only changes the file extension. Causing the file to appear corrupted. If you do this process in any other way either with competing cloud storage or just through file explorer it is fine and works as expected.
That is the nature of the issue. Noted in windows 7, windows 8, and windows 10, excel 2016 365.
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