Office Invalid XML error, file still opens in Office - excel

I have an .xlsx file that when run through the open Office SDK 2.5 generates an error that the document is invalid and contains multiple validation errors involving the slicerCache and invalid attribute values.
I can attach more information about the actual XML if needed from the xlsx file, however my question is actually this. Excel still opens the document without an error. Not even a request to "repair" the document.
I am curious why using the Microsoft open office XML SDK generates validation errors, yet office is still able to open these documents.
Does office make a best guess? Or is the SDK given by microsoft not entirely accurate??
Thanks.

This is a formatting issue as far as I can tell. When you save it in xlsx it saves it as a workbook, not a spreadsheet. I would save it in a different file format or see if there libraries that your sdk needs in order to process the xlsx. I've never worked with office sdk, but I get similar errors when I open xlsx in other programs. 99% of the time I can just change the format. (if you live dangerously you can just manual change the file extension in your folder to something itll read.)

Related

Workbook.SaveAs Sharepoint Integration

I have developed an Excel file that contains a button with a macro that will save the workbook for the user. This has worked well until recently when we are migrating to Sharepoint and users are trying to save the workbook to a mapped drive that is mapped to a Sharepoint location.
So, for example, my user has \\<server#SSL\sites\<sitename>\<documentlibrary> mapped to her Z drive.
When I use ThisWorkbook.GetSaveAsFilename the result returns a url like so https://<server#SSL\sites\<sitename>\<documentlibrary>\<filename>.xlsm
Before making any changes, I was getting a run-time error on the line
ThisWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:=excelFile
where excelFile is https://<server#SSL\sites\<sitename>\<documentlibrary>\<filename>.xlsm
My first attempt was to do some find/replace on the string. First replacing https: with nothing and then replacing the forward slash / with the backslash \ to make it resemble a file path like so:
\\<server#SSL\sites\<sitename>\<documentlibrary>\filename.xlsm
There was some progress made here. I received no VBA error, however I did get a message:
UPLOAD FAILED We're sorry this didn't work. Try saving again later
and if that still doesn't work, click Save a Copy
and I see the file attempting to be uploaded in the Microsoft Office Upload Center, so this is progress.
I can't seem to make it around this upload failure message.
I have tested that my permissions to the document library are sufficient by manually uploading the file that I am attempting to automatically upload.
So, how can I use ThisWorkbook.SaveAs to save a file to a Sharepoint document library?
I am using Excel 2013 and Sharepoint 2013.
While I cannot explain it, after some tinkering around, I believe I have found the solution.
Changing
ThisWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:=excelFile
To
ThisWorkbook.SaveAs fileName:=excelName, FileFormat:=xlOpenXMLWorkbook, ConflictResolution:=xlUserResolution
Seemed to make it work.
I explicitly set the FileFormat and ConflictResolution arguments and the user is able to save.

warning message in excel file

I code an asp file to response an excel file using Excel.Application object. I change the content type below.
Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"
When user downloads this file and open it, he get the following message.
The file format and extension of 'test.xls' don't match. The file
could be corrupted or unsafe. Unless you trust its source, don't open
it. Do you want to open it anyway?
I don't want to give this message to use. How can I remove this message from excel file.
This is due to a feature in MS Excel called Extension Hardening. There are 2 ways to fix this problem
You need to generate proper XLS files that are truly excel files, not HTML Tables saved with XLS extension
Each of the client machines need a registry tweak as explained here

Opening xlsx file created with SpreadSheetGear

I have created a simple Excel file using SpreadSheetGear. If I save it as an xls file
workbook.SaveAs("file.xls", SpreadsheetGear.FileFormat.Excel8);
and attach it to an email, I can open it on my phone (tested both with iPhone and Android).
If I save it as an xlsx file
workbook.SaveAs("file.xlsx", SpreadsheetGear.FileFormat.OpenXMLWorkbook);
and attach it to an email, I CANNOT open it on my phone.
If I open the xlsx file attachment on my computer and save it with no changes and attach it to an email, I now can open it on my phone.
Apparently Excel saves the file differently than SSG. The file size of the xlsx file attachment is 9 KB. When I open it on my computer and save it, the new file size is 24 KB.
Some of my users prefer the xlsx format. Is there anything I can do with to make the SSG generated file attachment open like an Excel generated file attachement?
iOS depends on certain attributes being present in the worksheet data of the Open XML file format to properly parse these files. SpreadsheetGear does not write these attributes out because they are listed as optional in the Open XML file format specification and, also, omitting them reduces file size, as you have noted. Excel, for whatever reason, always writes out these optional attributes and other third-party components often times rely on their presence to function correctly. SpreadsheetGear V5 added a workaround to write out these attributes by enabling a certain "Experimental" option. This option was added because the OLE DB provider also exhibits this errant behavior. You might try something like the following and see if this helps in getting SpreadsheetGear to better work with your viewer:
IWorkbookSet workbookSet = Factory.GetWorkbookSet();
workbookSet.Experimental = "OleDbOpenXmlWorkaround";
IWorkbook workbook = workbookSet.Workbooks.Open(#"C:\temp\BadWorkbook.xlsx");
workbook.SaveAs(#"C:\temp\GoodWorkbook.xlsx", FileFormat.OpenXMLWorkbook);
Please see the SpreadsheetGear.IWorkbookSet.Experimental property for more information on this feature.
From what I can tell, iOS/Andriod/etc often also depend on other certain optional features available in the file formats that SpreadsheetGear either doesn't support or write out by default. For instance, iOS depends on a "data cache" stored within charts to display chart series data points and SpreadsheetGear's support for writing out this data cache is limited. This can result in charts not displaying as expected in iOS, Android, etc.

Cannot connect csv to Excel thru ODBC

HI;
I cannot connect a CSV file to a SpreadSheet when the file is open. Currently a have a csv log file that is being constantly updated. I was able to connect it a an Excel SpreadSheet by normal import from external source with refresh every hour. However, its a big file so I needed to produce the reports using EXCEL SQL. It will not allow me to connect to the file while it is open. It says that the MS Jet database engine cannot open the file'unknown'. It is already opened exclusively by another user or i need permission to view its data. If granting permission is he problem , where do I grant myself permission. On a standard Impor, I have no problems reading the file while it is open, but otherwise, get this message and cannot proce3ed. Any help would be appreciated. If I close the update program, I am able to run the queries, but not if the update is running.
Using MSO 2007 W7 x64
It will not allow me to connect to the file while it is open.
That's right, it won't - there is no way to change this.
You must find another way to solve your problem.
How big is the file? You may be able to make a copy to a temporary filename, and connect Excel to that instead.
It sounds like you are accessing a logfile. LogParser can read CSV. In any case LogParser has an excellent SQL-like syntax and can read CSV files much more quickly and reliably than ODBC. It is also programmable from Excel VBA (or script). Perhaps you can use LogParser to extract the values of interest and then load those into your Excel table instead.
I suspect your best solution will be to use the LogParser MSUtil.LogQuery object from Excel VBA, to extract the values of interest into your spreadsheet. Since I don't know what you are actually doing this is just a guess!
I cannot recommend LogParser highly enough - it is a wonderful tool, and can read just about every standard type of logfile, CSV, TSV, W3C, as well as plain text files and the windows NT event logs:
LogParser 2.2 Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=890cd06b-abf8-4c25-91b2-f8d975cf8c07&displaylang=en

ms office file extensions

I made a discovery some time back. Just follow these steps:
Create a .doc/.xls/.ppt file in office 2003. Keep some test data in there and close the file. Now rename the file to change it's file extension to a random string, taking care that it is unassociated, like test.asdfghjkl etc.
Double click the file and it opens seamlessly in the parent application.
Now AFAIK, windows checks the file extension of the file and uses it to do an action, viz open an application and pass the file to it to open. Then how does the office suite manage to do this?
EDIT: How about the case when the extension is changed to one that is associated with another application. Is there a priority algorithm in place for handling that ?
Do you have the "View extensions for known types" option on?
EDIT: #Comments....
Yes, its a stupid/insulting question, but when troubleshooting a problem I have learned to assume nothing, and trust the users 0%.
BUT, I tried it, and you're right. Its stupid that MS has this kind of behavior, and it can only lead to security vulnerabilities, which led me on a search for your answer.
From the posts at http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2007/Jan/0444.html
"You have stumbled on an age-old
quirky behavior of Windows. Office
document formats are based on a
standard Windows container format, OLE
structured storage files, also known
as "docfiles". A docfile's name and
extension are irrelevant - the file
is, conceptually, a serialization of
an OLE object, and like all
serialization formats it contains the
identifier of the application that
produced it, in the form of an OLE
class id (in GUID format) in this
case. You can easily verify that it
doesn't work with the newer Office XML
formats"
Indeed it doesnt work for the 2007 *X file types, but 2K3 is still a problem. To solve this problem... Upgrade! =)
And here at security focus under TOC point 2.
So, there you go.
I can't seem to make this happen now, but I know I saw Windows reading XML processing instructions a few years back. Maybe that is what's going on?

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