Excel: Document not saved 5

[RobBroekhuis]

Weird problem today. I thought I'd seen just about everything but...
I'm trying to save a workbook I've been working on. When I try to "Save" or "Save as", Excel starts trying (updates the progress bar in the status bar), then pops up a message-box stating "Document not saved". First of all, I don't think I've seen Excel refer to workbooks as documents before. But more troubling, I can't seem to find out why it's not saving. There is no VBA code in any of the workbook or worksheet code modules, and no regular VBA code of any importance either.
I can probably salvage the work by copying to a new workbook, but this just frustrates me. Has anybody seen this before and know of a cause and/or solution?
Thanks
Rob

 

[bandit600]

Rob,

A long shot <- Heading

Does your workbook contain a link to an embedded object? Excel has a problem if you deleted the link and reinstated it because the deletion isn't completed until the file is closed.

bandit600

 

[RobBroekhuis]

Thanks for the suggestion, but... Nope, no links. Unfortunately, I'll never find out what was wrong - a network job came along that rebooted my PC, and the old version of the corrupted workbook loads and saves just fine. Just some rework of this morning's activities needed...
Rob

 

[Nikita6003]

Rob,

I've had this happen to workbooks as well, in the following circumstances:
1. Workbook with VBA code where one of the modules was corrupted.
2. Workbook used as a reporting template: this workbook keeps getting sheets added, then moved. My suspicions are that this happens because excel thinks the max number of 256 sheets has been reached - even tho' the workbook itself never has more than 8 sheets in it.
3. Network problems - according to our helpdesk, it had to do with a setting they'd changed for packets. No further details available on that. You can call our helpdesk if you like - but you'll most likely hear &quot;there are 2534 people waiting. Please call back later. The cnnection will now be disconnected automatically&quot;
4. Some workbooks created entirely using VBA - but this happens VERY infrequently so I have no idea WHY
5. Workbooks which have been opened by another user, who then had their xl crash. The workbook is then still marked as opened by that user.

Most of our processes run on a Citrix Win 2000 Server or on a Win NT 4 environment

I know this is probably not much help but ya never know ;-)

Cheers
Nikki

 

[xlhelp]

Rob,

If memory serves right (and I am getting old), it may be a service release issue. i believe we used to have that problem with Office 2000 SR-1, but once we applied SR-2 the problem disappeared.

I am only assuming the version you may be using. &quot;Age is a high price to pay for maturity.&quot;

 

[ajcarr]

I've had this problem a few times but I do a lot of Spreadsheet manipulation using VBA.It has certainly occurred in the situation that Nikki describes above where a workbook has lots of worksheet create/deletes. Excel is not too clever at handling size reductions in workbooks. I experienced a dreadful problem where a file created using VBA could be saved, the file manipulated while still open but if then closed without saving and the saved file reloaded, it caused Excel to crash.I was told that this was due to Excel tidying up its memory on saving and putting overflow blocks into their correct logical sequence. Unfortunately, it didn't check whether the resulting structure was within the maximum table sizes and overwote key data on the reload, causing the crash. I lost several days work through this!

 

[RobBroekhuis]

Thanks for all your insights. I don't think any particular situation described above applies, but maybe a little bit of this and that. Actually, I think I may have done myself in by creating a temporary userform in VBA (researching a topic before posting a response in the VBA forum), and removing the userform. I'd set up _beforedragover and _beforedroporpaste events for the userform, something I'd not done before. Maybe Excel got confused...
That'll teach me to always open a dummy workbook for quick testing! Rob

 

[xlbo]

Rob - I've had that message before - it just won't go away right ??? whatever you do. Now - this only applies if you are on a network so if you were not, there's probably no point you reading any further. the very simple explanation for this message is that the network connection has been lost (briefly) and excel, for whatever reason, can't seem to get its &quot;head&quot; round this and won't allow the save (even if you try and specify a different location). For anyone who gets this problem in the future, the only way round is to select all sheets and do a copy SHEET (not a normal copy/paste) into a new workbook. This will then save down fine

HTH Rgds
Geoff

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur

 

[GlennUK]

Yes, Geoff,

I remember it well. Had this happen a few times over the years. Very annoying.

Glenn.

 

[RobBroekhuis]

I actually executed a sheets.copy from the immediate window, but found that the new workbook created behaved EXTREMELY oddly, and certainly didn't want to be saved either. Anyway, case closed for now - I'll try to apply your insights next time (?) this happens.
Thanks all! Rob

 

[Gavona]

Thanks for all the insights. Had the same problem twice in the last week many times in the past. For me there seem to be two distinct causes:
* this week for example I reckon its all down to all down to the critically low space on the server(Or maybe the work that IT are doing to address that). Sometimes I can save successfully to a local disk. Sometimes it clears eventually (ie overnight) but often neither works. Have given Geoff a star because it sounds like that solution might well help.

*the other occaisions I've had less frequently of late (software improved?) but are definitely linked to lots of re-organisations based around a large spreadsheet - similar perhaps to those Ajcarr reports.
Question: Having had these problems is it sufficient to exit and re-start Excel or should I really re-boot the computer. (W2000 + Office 2000)

 

[cgrimmett]

I am experiencing this same problem. I had it once before, and when I divided the workbook into two books, the problem went away. Now, after a year, it has returned. My workbooks have many additions/deletions done during the course of a work week. I am wondering if the size of the workbooks is causing the problem. The size continues to grow until it reaches a point where no changes can be saved at all in the workbooks. Does anyone know if there is a size limit for Excel workbooks?

 

[xlbo]

The size of a workbook CAN indeed cause problems and the bigger they are, generally, the more likely they are to crash. The biggest I have used with success (ie doesn't watson / out of mem etc every 20 mins is apprx 55 meg tho I do have a 70 megger ( No &quot;My wb's bigger than yours&quot; comps pls) but that tends to get &quot;out of memory&quot; messages quite a lot. The main probelm with large workbooks is the &quot;calculation stack&quot;. This is where excel stores what calcs it needs to do and in what order. Where you have MANY calcs, excel is unable to create the calc stack properly and has to recalc everything, whenever anything changes. This is what most commonly causes Dr Watson (App Crashes) or Out Of Memory errors in large workbooks.

HTH Rgds
Geoff

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur

 

[PontusM]

I think it is a network problem causing this, brief or permanent disconnection. Tried the tip from xlbo above. Thanks, you saved me hours of work! While copying all sheets of workbooks that would not save I received a message that &quot;You're no longer connected to server xxxx&quot;.

The new book I had copied all sheets to would save to local disk without any problem.

I'm running Excel 2000 SR-1, but xlhelp remarked that the problem was gone on SR-2. Why are we still running SR-1 then in such a huge corporation as mine (yes I own shares)!!
Regards
//Pontus