Re: Cannot create, open, or save Excel:mac 2004 workbook (.xls) files

Mark, some comments below:


On 8/24/05 1:47 PM, in article uh$dwPNqFHA.2968@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Mark
Frautschi" <mark.frautschi@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


> I decided that the
> ~\Documents\Microsoft User Data\Office 2004 Identities\Main
> Identity\Database
> file was corrupt.

Maybe, but this has NOTHING to do with Excel. It is the place where
entourage stores email, calendar, addresses, etc.

> I may be unfair in my accusation. "Corrupt" may merely mean that it
> contained some of the references for the original account, and that when
> I recreated the account, something was different (directory paths,
> permissions, for example) and Office:mac 2004 was not finding
> preferences or .dot files in the right place or the right owner.
>
> Healing the corrupted file was probably too much work and too risky, so,

In Office 2004, it's pretty easy. Just launch entourage with the shift key
down and a database utility will open instead. You then have the option to
verify, rebuild and compact the database.

> I made copies of all of the user's data except the abovementioned
> Database file, and exported all of the e-mail, calendar, etc. that I
> could from Entourage.
>
> I then completely deleted the user account and all files.
>
> I recreated the account (same name, etc.) I moved back all of the files
> except Database, imported the Entourage, restored as many settings as I
> could remember (I did not re-import any .plist files) and so on.
>
> My customer is at last happy.
>
> I wish I knew what the "smoking gun" was, but I could not find any way
> to edit the database (Bare Bones Edit Lite could barely open it) or
> repair it. (Microsoft does not offer a Database repair or editing
> utility as far as I could tell

Yes, they do, see above. Yes, the contents of the database are proprietary,
and contain a whole bunch of entourage's stuff.

> and the third party offerings did not
> receive solid reviews so far as I could tell.)
>
> The problem, for all I know, could also live in a .plist file.
>
>
> FWIW, I search of the smoking gun I also looked for clues in open files:
>
> I closed all Office Apps, then I opened Terminal and did a

I'm clueless as to Unix. However, did you also launch activity monitor and
notice Database Daemon? This is part of office and monitors the database
file mentioned above in order to display alarms and alerts.
>
> $ lsof | grep Microsoft > t1.txt
>
> I next launched Excel and repeated the above, saving to another file,
> t2.txt:
>
> $ lsof | grep Microsoft > t2.txt
>
> and differenced the two files
>
> $ diff t1.txt t2.txt
>
> The rather large list of files that Excel opens persuaded me that
> starting over as I indicated above, might be best, rather than
> investigating the permissions and owner of each file.
>
> So, again, the problem seems to have been solved, by brute force, not
> elegance.
>
> Thank you for your help.
>
>
>
> Bob Greenblatt wrote:
>> Why do you have 2 versions of Office? You should probably remove Office 2001
>> and do all your office work in Office 2004. Try removing it and see if it
>> works properly with only one version of Office installed. Do things work
>> properly if you open the document(s) from the application's file menu?


--
Bob Greenblatt [MVP], Macintosh
bobgreenblattATmsnDOTcom

.

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