Excel files corrupted when opened on iPad

I have a 2022 Macbook Air M2 and an iPad Air 2. All run the latest versions of the operating systems. My Mac has Excel 2021 and my iPad has the Excel 365 app. I have a number of Excel spreadsheets which are stored in the documents folder in iCloud drive. I regularly edit these files on my Mac, and occasionally also open and edit them on my iPad. This has worked without problems for the last six months until this week. Now if i open a file on my iPad, the next time I try and open it on my Mac or iPad I get an Excel error saying:

Alert - Excel cannot open the file ’Portfolio Valuation TEST.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.

This happens with any Excel file I open on the iPad. The first time i open it it is ok, and thereafter it becomes corrupted.

iPad Air 2, iPadOS 14

Posted on May 5, 2023 12:46 AM

Best reply

johny-pro

Level 1

8 points

Posted on Jan 9, 2024 10:31 PM

I found something that helped me a little maybe it can help you too. Use your Mac, locate the excel on your icloud, try opening it with Numbers. Probably your numbers is gonna give some sort of an error just like excel does however this time it asks you if you want to browse this file's history and restore it. If you accept, it shows a page in which it allows you to scroll through all past variations of this file. Locate the last file right before you used your ipad and restore it. Open it with numbers and export it to excel. Now this will not give you the same excel but at least it will show you your data right before using your ipad which could be some sort of a guideline to create the same excel sheet for yourself.

This is as close as I got to fixing the issue, honestly it's way better than not having anything. Try it hopefully it works for you too.

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Excel files corrupted when opened on iPad

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