Microsoft should FIX - "Errors were detected while saving (filename)"

Asha Kanta Sharma 456

Microsoft must FIX this decade long bug with appears out of nowhere and has ruined a lot of months of work of my life. Please fix the below error message. It is even appearing in latest Office 2019.

"Errors were detected while saving (filename). Microsoft excel may be able to save the file by removing or repairing some features. To make the repairs in a new file click Continue. To cancel saving the file click Cancel."

THIS ERROR/BUG HAS RUINED MY LIFE PROFESSIAONLLY.

FIX IT WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY...

Emily Hua-MSFT 27,651 Reputation points

2020-07-30T09:25:29.553+00:00

I am checking the status of this issue. Do you have any update for it?
Emily Hua-MSFT 27,651 Reputation points

2020-08-05T05:06:18.957+00:00

Is there any update? Please remember to share us with solution when you solve this issue, and accept you reply as an answer.
Isahamster11 1 Reputation point

2021-12-17T19:16:43.57+00:00

Yeah, this error caused me half day of work. i've tried the effort of copying it onto a plain new excel worksheet, but it just keeps spinning and does not let me save or even do anything in the new worksheet. I was able to save it as pdf, since it is something I work on top of other people's worksheet, I will be relying on the next worksheet I receive would not have the same issue.

Hope this helps a little?

Best of luck!
Kyle Strachan 5 Reputation points

2023-06-23T17:49:58.1666667+00:00

Hello,

I received this error when the date format of my PC was changed from YYYY-MM-DD to MM-DD-YYYY. My document also uses custom formatting. A date format change also appears to trigger this.

Kyle
Phanishwar Kumar 50 Reputation points

2023-07-17T05:56:52.5666667+00:00
Solved:

Copy the file to another system.

Open the file

Save the file

Copy the saved file back to your system and replace the existing file.

The file should work normally now.
Keshav Modugu 0 Reputation points

2023-07-21T11:27:15.6666667+00:00

Hi Take empty work book and do the format painter with existing file (error file) and take copy the data and paste in new work book and save it
Runit Sareen 0 Reputation points

2023-08-08T07:22:48.27+00:00

@Phanishwar Kumar Thanks!!
Sarah Henry 5 Reputation points

2023-09-08T18:53:23.72+00:00

I had an entire linked workbook with several tabs and embedded objects that I'd worked on for an entire day, and this happened. I'm not savvy enough to understand the other solution that helped everyone, but from reading this forum, I got the idea to Select all Tabs, "Move or Copy", I selected the "Copy" box, and selected the new blank workbook I had opened, to "copy" them to, and hit ok. To my delight, it worked, and I was able to save the new workbook.
Andres Anano 0 Reputation points

2024-01-11T08:43:26.4666667+00:00

Phanishwar Kumar thank you; it worked for me
Darren McMartin 5 Reputation points

2024-02-03T01:18:44.1733333+00:00

This problem is still occurring in Excel. It has existed for over 3 years and Microsoft still haven't fixed it. It's ridiculous.
Vernon L. Kury 0 Reputation points

2024-02-18T16:27:05.4533333+00:00

The correction posted by FEDERICO GALLERANI seemed to work great. Pity this is a apparent problem caused by serveral things (none of which, as far as I can tell, are affrimed by the Excel team at Mocrosoft) that should be more easily avoided. Glad I did not lose more time than was needed to fix this issue.
melsey 0 Reputation points

2024-02-29T20:02:35.0566667+00:00

Thought I would share my experience with this horrendous Excel error. I too lost a lot of work to the error. I've started doing a SAVE AS every once in a while so I build up a number of old backup files. All my versions will be working, then I usually encounter this error when I do another copy. I then try to open the previous save as version, and I find that file does the same thing! Even though it was working 100% perfectly minutes or days ago. I usually have to go back 2 or 3 older copies to get one that works. How can a file work one day perfectly, and I don't touch it, and then all of a sudden it has the same save bug? Now, in addition to doing a save as, I copy all the VBA code/modules/classes/etc to text files as a backup. As sometimes when I get the error, all my modules will be inaccessible so I can't copy the text out of them into another file, once the error occurs.
Boily, Romain (RTA) 0 Reputation points

2024-03-12T12:10:42.3766667+00:00

You saved my life ! Thanks so much !
Davis Holt 0 Reputation points

2024-03-19T20:39:58.3333333+00:00

such an annoying error, and microsoft doesn't seem to care
Jamie Meechan 0 Reputation points

2024-04-08T02:05:29.58+00:00

Easy fix I found - remove all custom number formatting. Once saved successfully you can add it back.
James T 0 Reputation points

2024-04-11T13:40:00.06+00:00

Still having this issue here in May of 2024. Regular spreadsheet, no VB, nothing fancy beyond some arithmetic formulas. These files are stored on a network drive and opened on a computer on that network, but why in the world would there a be a problem with that?? I think that's a pretty common business set up...

I copy and paste the file onto my desktop using a new window, open that one and I can save it, but I lose all of my work since the last time I saved it. Been an issue for years I see and no fix? What?
Philip Leicester 0 Reputation points

2024-05-21T15:55:35.2866667+00:00

And so it goes on. And on. And learn.microsoft don't give a monkeys about how many professional working days are lost to this ridiculous bug.

Many solutions below but they're not really solution since they require a rebuild of a spreadsheet in some form or other. For large and shared files on share point, with complex VBA this is tedious in the extreme.

Excel / Office 365 integration is simply not fit for purpose.
Steve Lipsman 30 Reputation points

2024-05-21T16:17:32.6933333+00:00

First Posted 2/29/24

Ever since I made this fix for both myself and had done for all 200+ PCs for my major client, the issue went completely away. People really need to read all helpful posts here.

VBA in Workbooks Stops Working With Upgrade to Excel 365-VBA Compiling Issue In my and my client’s continuing struggles with the extremely annoying Excel VBA file corruption issues (VBA code in workbooks stop working with upgrade to Excel 365), I think I may have found something new worth trying. See the Stackoverflow link below, with the relevant proposed solution printed out. I’ve just applied this change to my PC Registry, but I’m hesitant to recommend anyone else do this as I’m clearly no expert in making such PC system changes. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69018012/vba-workbooks-stop-working-with-upgrade-to-excel-365-vba-compiling-issue I think I perhaps found an answer in this thread: https://lnkd.in/gU3E2bfG

Per that thread: “the cause is that Excel does not correctly save the compile state of the VBA code and 64-bit Excel cannot recover from that issue when opening the afflicted Excel file (32-bit usually can). A fix was released for only Excel 2016 and not for other versions". That would indeed confirm that it is a bug within Excel and explains why we only see the issue with 365 64-bit Excel.

That also explains why my manual compile fix works. Based on the article I found, there is a more sustainable fix. You can change Excel’s registry and force VBA to compile accurately.

To implement the permanent fix:

1. Open the start menu and type “reg” and select the “Registry Editor”. 2. Navigate to: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\options. 3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value. 4. Type ForceVBALoadFromSource, and then press Enter. 5. In the Details or Name pane, right-click ForceVBALoadFromSource (that you’ve just added), and then click Modify. 6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
Claudio M 0 Reputation points

2024-08-22T14:42:22.2966667+00:00

To avoid losing your data, select all the information in your file and clear the formatting and try saving again.

22 answers

WhyNot Nera 0 Reputation points

2023-09-30T03:02:45.8266667+00:00

How, To download this spreadsheet, simply click File --> Download --> Microsoft Excel. You'll then be able to open this in your spreasheet tool, and can delete this comment
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Nguyen, Vincent 0 Reputation points

2023-10-28T04:07:03.6433333+00:00

Hi All,

I tried all the ways to fix but all suggestions didn't not work for me until I had the IT guy helps.

The solution is: I uninstalled the current version of MS Office, after that I re-installed the MS office again ( I'm using MS 10).

Whenever this issue happened, I did this step again.

It completely solve the issue.

Hope this help to you guys also.

Thank.
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ATKI 0 Reputation points

2023-12-18T11:27:33.8266667+00:00
Hi,

I encountered this problem today on a Macro-Enabled file that I had open while changing my Microsoft password. I am tying the occurrence of this problem when saving with password changing, as I did not do anything else in particular with the Excel file that I didn't do since I created it 4 years ago.

After reading through various solutions, I tried the following:

Saving the file with another name: file wouldn't allow me to save it with a new file name, I received the same error again

Did an inspection of the document with Document Inspector and noticed several errors in its results

Copied and pasted all sheets + VBA code to a new file - this worked

But I wanted to know where the problem was, so I opened both the new (solved) file and the old (with error) file with a compression tool and checked internal file sizes. I noticed a big difference in the xl\vbaProject.bin files between the 2 Excel files.

I opened the bad file in Excel once again then went to VBA and commented all my VBA codes (didn't export modules or anything, just added comments to the entire VBA code). Then I saved the Excel file normally (CTRL+S) and saving worked without issue. Then I removed the comment characters I previously added and saved the file and it worked again (it is now fixed).

In conclusion, I still don't know exactly what the problem was, but it appeared while changing the Microsoft password with the Excel file open, then was fixed by commenting all the VBA code inside + saving, then removing all previously added comments from all VBA code + saving again.

I hope this helps.
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Bob Zabcik 0 Reputation points

2024-01-17T04:28:54.89+00:00

Hi All! I have run into the many forms of this problem over the years and created this GitHub repository to hold VBA code you may find helpful in recovering from and more importantly, avoiding it altogether. Good Luck Everyone! Hopefully Microsoft will catch a clue on this but I'm personally not hopeful.
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melsey 0 Reputation points

2024-02-29T20:05:47.89+00:00

Thought I would share my experience with this horrendous Excel error. I too lost a lot of work to the error. I've started doing a SAVE AS every once in a while so I build up a number of old backup files. All my versions will be working, then I usually encounter this error when I do another copy. I then try to open the previous save as version, and I find that file does the same thing! Even though it was working 100% perfectly minutes or days ago. I usually have to go back 2 or 3 older copies to get one that works. How can a file work one day perfectly, and I don't touch it, and then all of a sudden it has the same save bug? Now, in addition to doing a save as, I copy all the VBA code/modules/classes/etc to text files as a backup. As sometimes when I get the error, all my modules will be inaccessible so I can't copy the text out of them into another file, once the error occurs.
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Microsoft should FIX - "Errors were detected while saving (filename)"

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