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Level 1

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Can't open Office 2011 files on CIFS/SMB shares.

I can't open Excel or Word documents if they are opened from a network CIFS/SMB share. Excel returns something like "could not open because some content is unreadable" and offers to repair the document. Word just questions if the document is corrupt and errors out too. If I drag the same document to my desktop, it opens just fine. Is something broken with SMB? I'm running the latest Yosemite (10.10) upgraded from Mavericks 10.9.5. Office 2011 is completely updated too.

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012), OS X Server

Posted on Oct 20, 2014 12:34 PM

Best reply

inactionhero

Level 1

10 points

Posted on Oct 22, 2014 3:13 PM

I've come across this in my workplace environment as well. You will either get an error like this:

Foo.doc uses a file type that is blocked from opening in this version.

Word cannot open this document. The document might be in use, the document might not be a valid Word document, or the file name might contain invalid characters (for example, \ /).

(Foo.docx)

We would normally connect using the following:

smb://file-server.fqdn/share

We found that if you unmount your SMB connections and connected like this:

cifs://file-server.fqdn/share

We were then able to open the files without a problem.

We had this problem on NetApp c-mode file shares, however EMC VNX and Windows Server file shares didn't have this problem.

Guessing most likely this is due to a change in the SMB protocol in OS X 10.10.

As always, YMMV.

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18 replies

Mar 23, 2016 3:07 AM in response to declure

I tried to change from SMB to CIFS and it not work.

My Company share common data on the Network Drive and other can Read the Workbook (with all product details and price) only.

For other shared file that allow edit, Excel 15.20 on my Macbook open well. But for the file that share with Read Only, it return to error :

"Excel could not open <filename.xlxs> because some content is unreadable. Do you want to open and repair this workbook?"

Please help to support.

P/S : I have problem with excel only. The Word file work well even in the Read Only Network Drive .

May 1, 2016 7:42 AM in response to declure

I am having the same problem with my QNAP network drive. In the Finder, I have the choices of:
Qnap451nas
Qnap451NAS(AFP)

Qnap451NAS(SMB)

Connecting to the drive via any of these and trying to access an excel file gives this error:

If I move the file to my computer e.g. downloads, I can open it without any problems.

Would like to see a proper solution for this.
Thanks.

Eric Root

Level 10

684,105 points

May 1, 2016 8:54 AM in response to glidstone

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is marked solved, less people are likely to look at it. You can link to this one.

Can't open Office 2011 files on CIFS/SMB shares.