Issue with Excel - "Excel file format is not valid"

[flew]

Excel file format is not valid.  Please help as unable to open Excel.

[Brandos]

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.

[Brandos · Accepted solution]

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.

[WoundingPhantom]

Found same issue today this helped Thanks.

Definately an issue with the save to dropbox add-in. Saving a csv to xlsx , using windows explorer to browse to the dropbox folder path has no issues.

[Tombromgrove]

Hi there 

I am all of a sudden having the same problem, using Excel 2016 pro. I have removed the dropbox add in adn tried saving in different formats. This is a real problem for a company that uses spreadsheet after spreadsheet, any updated fixes welcome. Thanks 

[Mark]

I can almost certainly say the issue is not Dropbox, but, the fact that the file structure is too big.

Windows can usually only access files or folders when the total number of characters is less than 250. So, without counting I think thats the issue. You need to make the folder structure smaller (e.g. 'Bromgrove Iraq Ltd' to maybe just Bromgrove and next way to 'Out of Country' etc.)

[Walter]

Hey @Tombromgrove,

Just to add some additional information to what @Mark said. 

The issue you seem to be having is probably be due to a limitation of the applications that you're using to open the files in question.

This means that there are files that your applications can't process correctly since they have file paths that are too long ( the file path from your screenshot is a great example). 

This behavior is present if there are more than 255 characters in the entire file path. This means from the C:\ all the way to the extension of a file. Note that  the latest Dropbox desktop application versions do support for Dropbox to read and write to locations that are longer than 255 characters and files will sync to and from those locations, however the applications used to open said files (e.g. Word, Notepad, Excel, etc.) might not support reading from these locations with long file paths and may show error messages like the one you get when trying to open, save or edit these files. This is out of our control since the application developers would have to add support for long paths to resolve the issue.

You should be able to resolve the issues with your applications processing these files by simply renaming the file to a shorter name, renaming a folder to a shorter name, or reducing the number of sub-folders. 

I hope this helps! 

[Tombromgrove]

Hi Guys, 

thanks very much for the responses, we will change the docs to shorten the total length as per your recommendations. 

Thanks again!! 

Tom

[Walter]

Please let us know if this helped after all @Tombromgrove! 

[lbarry]

I have been using my dropbox account for a few years with no issues. Recently, when I was saving a file (which Iregularly use) a message popped up saying I needed to "grant access" to save the file to the location. It was a random message that had never come up before but I granted access and was able to proceed. This has appeared a few times for different files since then. 

Now my lastest issue is that it won't let me open a file. The error message states:

"Excel cannot open the file 'George Cycle 2.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 use these files regularly and this has just come out of the blue. 

All ideas as to why this has started happening would be great!!

Thanks!

[Jane]

Hey @lbarry, I appreciate your prompt message detailing us what this looks like on your end. Kindly note that I’ve moved your thread under this discussion here, as other users have posted some workarounds that have proved helpful in resolving this discrepancy. To recap, here’s a few helpful tips to get you going: 

Spoiler

#1. I’d recommend unlinking & relinking your account on your desktop once, as it recreates the local database. 

#2. Check the file path length. 

#3. You may have to repair the file extension. 

If you’re still getting the same results after trying my suggestions, I’d appreciate it if you included a screenshot in your next reply here, so as to get a better idea of the issue at hand?

Please do keep me updated on the results you’re getting on this discussion here & thanks again for taking the time to try my suggestions. Looking forward to hearing back from you!