iPhone 4 not opening .XLSX attachments

Question

Level 1

13 points

iPhone 4 not opening .XLSX attachments

Hi All,

Have an issue where iPhone 4's (yes two different handsets with different user accounts/sims/etc) will not open Excel XLSX attachments to view. Press & Hold on th eattachment in the email and selecting 'Quick Look' from the pop-up menu only displays a blank page with the following in the centre:

blank document logo

filename.xlsx

"Office Open XML Spreadsheet"

file size

The mail is using the MS Exchange client on the iPhone connectign to our Exchange Server. It looks like perhaps it's tried to open the file and can't or perhaps hasn't properly downloaded it from the mail server and is jsut deispalyign a generic page?

I've Googled extensivley for a couple of hours or so and can't find anything on the web specifically relating to this issue. The documentation and such on the Apple site for the iPhone is not overly clear but does seem to suggest it should have the native ability to open & view such attachments. We've had the iPhones for 6 months plus and haven't encountered the issue previously - I can't specifically recall opening an XLSX file versus an older XLS one but the other user is adamant he's opened them previously about three months ago and earlier (so I'm wondering if one of the latest O/S upgrades may have broken it)...?

Appreciate any guidance, pointers, suggestions?

Message was edited by: Mycenius [Formatting Adjustment]

iPhone 4, iOS 4.3.3

Posted on Jul 10, 2011 8:42 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 19, 2011 1:21 AM in response to Mycenius

Hi Mycenius,

Did you get a solution or somehow work out this problem. I have a client that has an iPad, and the exact same problem occurs. They could read xlsx attachments without any problems up until about 2-3 weeks ago. He has 3 different locations/offices that staff members send xlsx attachments from. 2 of the 3 offices that send xlsx attachments is unable to read them and the iPad shows the same message as described in your post. I suspect that it is likely to be some sort of Windows update that has changed something from the senders side, that the iPad OS cannot understand. I am also unable to read from my iphone and ive also tested and ipad 2 - we get the same result. My iPhone is fully up to date with Apple updates. Ive also sent the xlsx attachments to a iMac and it opens without a problem using Office for Mac 2010.

If you or anyone have found a solution i would love to hear it.

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Answer 2

Mycenius Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 19, 2011 1:51 AM in response to jayzaidan

Hi Jayzaidan,

No - unresolved in theory. The work around was to scrap the offending XLSX file and have the sender create a brand new file from scratch and rebuild the spreadsheet manually (no copying and pasting from the original spreadsheet) - once they sent the fresh new file the iPhone & iPad O/S can view it. So you are probably on the right track but I suspect it's maybe to do with Microsoft Office's save options and/or embedded functions & formats in the file (i.e. Excel) rather than any specific Windows Update to Office. We found the same file was *usually* fine if you went back a few versions (e.g. one case was a weekly summary report to the MD - the sender simply went 'save as' each week and saved it under a new name and updated the input figures with that weeks data - it worked fine one week and not the next). However I also found one where it had opened fine for months and months until the issue cropped up but then none would open - even ones from 3 months prior that had opened fine previously - which suggested it was an iOS change/update that might have caused the issue rather than Excel or the file itself (i.e. something changed in the iPhone OS that didn't like a particular thing in the XLSX file format that was only present in the XLSX files occassionally).

Unfortunately we work in a hybrid environment (some of our users work with Office 2007 in Windows XP on a PC or Laptop, but sometimes - e.g. if working from home - use Office 2000 with Office 2007 viewers, etc, installed on a Windows Server 2003 RDP session), so it has been too hard to eliminate the possible sources of the change to the XLSX files. However we have 3 iPhone and 2 iPad users (incl. myself) and we've all had the issue with the same files.

Check if you are talking about specifically XLSX files that have been around a while - and try creating a brand new one from scratch - I'm sure you will find it's specifically the existing files that have been saved (or 'saved as') recently; and either as you suspect since some sort of update, or alternatively with some sort of change to their format/options (possibly inadvertent or ASCII/Unicode related or such like), or an iOS change is the cause.

Right now I'm still stumped and don't think it'll be resolved unless Apple review the iOS support for the files to identify the issue - i.e. is it iOS not supporting the full XLSX protocol, or is it Microsoft who have a non-standard coding in the XLSX (like they do with most of their HTML stuff in IE), or are some XLSX files 'broken' by a flawed MS update to Office?

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Answer 3

Fentondd

Level 1

8 points

Jul 5, 2012 8:17 PM in response to Mycenius

Hello everyone,

This issue just poped up in my world as well, we have a customer who sends us PO's in excell format and until just recently we have always been able to open them on our IOS devices. i tried to open the files in several other applications ( evernote, numbers, dropbox, etc...) with no luck. I also opened the file and saved it as a .xls file and emaild it back to my self to see if i could then open it it and still no luck. Here is the screen shot of the error i am recieving. I will contine to try and find a solution as we need to be able to read these. please post if you find a solution on your end. Thanks

receiving

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Answer 4

Super-P

Level 1

0 points

May 2, 2014 7:25 AM in response to Mycenius

Is anyone tapping on the "download entire message" link at the very bottom of the e-mail? We were having this issue and discovered that downloading the entire message first allowed us to view the attachments just fine (both XLSX, DOCX, and older formats).

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