Excel File cannot be accessed

Question

Level 1

2 points

Excel File cannot be accessed

Hi

I upgraded my Excel for Mac 2011 to version 14.3.0 a few days ago and since then, files that I could open now refuse to open.

I am getting the error message as follows

XXX file cannot be accessed. The file may be read-only, or you may be trying to access a read-only location. Or, the server the document is stored on may not be responding.

The files are in the same place they were when they were opening a few days ago, nothing else has changed except this update!

Any ideas?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Feb 7, 2013 4:37 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Dec 17, 2014 10:16 AM in response to Pale Cloud

I had this problem too. Restarting Excel fixed it in my case.

Reply

Answer 2

robdonal

Level 1

4 points

May 12, 2015 11:52 AM in response to Pale Cloud

I restarted excel and it resolved the issue

Reply

Answer 3

Oct 19, 2015 10:16 AM in response to robdonal

Sometimes it's the most obvious solution. Restart of Excel fixed it for me too.

Reply

Answer 4

Feb 7, 2013 7:29 AM in response to Pale Cloud

With your mouse, right-button select any Excel document icon to bring up the contextual menu and choose Get Info. If you have an open Safari browser on the left side of your screen, the Get Info panel hides behind it.

On the Get Info panel, look for the section that says Open with: If the selected opening application is not Excel, then is Excel on the associated menu? If yes, Choose Excel. If not, select Other and navigate in the dialog to the Excel application icon and choose it. In the Open with section is a button -- Change All... This is saying that you want Excel to always open files of this type. Proceed.

Double-click on any .xls(x) document and it should now launch it in Excel.

Next, in Finder > Go > Utilities, launch Disk Utility. Find your boot drive (by default Macintosh HD) and choose First Aid on the Disk Utility tabs. You want to verify/repair file permissions. This is a good habit to develop when installing new or updating existing applications or Operating system upgrades. Exit from Disk Utility when this is done.

Reply

Answer 5

Aboo76

Level 1

8 points

Feb 26, 2014 9:05 AM in response to Pale Cloud

Hello everyone, I just fixed this issue on one of my user's macs.

It's nothing to do with your version of Office, or OS X, or file permissions, or folder permissions, or a corrupted xls/xlsx file.

During troubleshooting I noticed that the name of the HDD was different to the original default name, so I thought I'd change it back and see what happened. It solved the problem.

Open the Terminal in the Utilities folder and paste the following at the prompt:

sudo diskutil rename / "Macintosh HD"

Press RETURN. Enter your admin password as prompted. It will not echo to the screen. Press RETURN again.

Diskutil is a disk utility.
Rename is a command.
/ is your main drive.

Note that there is a space before the slash mark and after it.

Well that worked for me when nothing else would, so good luck!

Reply