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Forum Discussion
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.
Rich
Super User II
Super User IIYou 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.
- 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.
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.
