Microsoft Excel for Mac database corruption (sqlite)

Question

Dear Microsoft Support Team,

we have problems with Microsoft Excel for Mac. Whenever we start the application it asks to recover the last state of a document. It doesn't state which document it wants to repair and if we accept it opened up the last couple of documents that we have worked on. This only occurs once whenever the application is started. In the console there are hundreds of errors like:

Microsoft Excel database corruption at line 89345 of [2b954060f]

/Applications/Microsoft Excel.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Excel (/usr/lib/libsqlite3.dylib)

Subsystem: com.apple.libsqlite3 Category: logging

Activity ID: 0 Thread ID: 0xcf71 PID: 715

What can we do to solve the problem? Where is the sqlite database stored? Can we delete them so that Excel creates a new one?

Kind regards,

Oliver

Answer 1

Hi Oliver,

Generally, if the problem no longer occurs on a new user account, we suggest customers contact Apple Support to troubleshoot existing account.

We did checked the error log, and found that some errors come from MacOS from the very beginning, even before Excel error appears. 

Given this situation, you may contact Apple support to further check the logs, since there are MacOS related error messages. We appreciate your understanding.

@Jim Gordon MVP, thanks for the sharing.

Best Regards,

Jim Liu

Answer 2

Just to re-iterate - it is unusual for a user profile to become corrupt. I think the most likely cause is file system corruption. Please consider doing a Safe Boot or using Disk Utility or other disk maintenance program to inspect and repair your startup volume, if necessary.

Answer 3

Hi Jim,

thanks for your reply. Microsoft is still working on the problem and I hope to hear back from them soon.

Like I said before, using a new user account is not an option for the user. The problem might reoccur or different users might be affected as well at a later point. This approach is something that I know from the Windows-world, but so far I have always been successful in solving issues with applications or settings on macOS. That being said, it is a 3rd party application using different built-in frameworks and libraries, but I hope that the developing company of this application will be able to pinpoint the issue and solve it for all users.

There are no problems with Outlook at the moment and we have already tried all basic troubleshooting steps, like emptying caches and rebuilding them.

Answer 4

Hi Oliver,

Different Jim this time. I don't work for Microsoft.

I think you did a good job of isolating the problem to corruption in the original user account. Generally, I advise users whose problem is corrected by starting a new user account to simply abandon the problem account and move your files to the new one. Trying to troubleshoot a corrupt user account is usually more trouble than it's worth.

That said, it is a good idea to think about possible things that could corrupt a user account. My first inclination is to advise performing a Safe Boot by restarting the Mac and immediately holding the SHIFT key down until the Apple logo appears. It should take a long time to boot up, as Disk Utility runs in the background fixing file system errors, the font cache is emptied, and other things take place. Once you get to the desktop, do a regular restart.

If you want a more hands-on approach instead, boot to the recovery partition and run Disk Utility on the startup volume to verify it is OK. Then use a font utility to empty the font cache and verify all the fonts. Delete duplicate fonts and fonts that don't verify as perfect.

You've already uninstalled and reinstalled Office, so chances are slim that there's anything wrong there. You might consider reinstalling Mac OS X as a preventive.

How to **Reinstall Sierra Without Erasing Drive** - …

Thinking about SQL Lite, the only Office app that I know uses SQL Lite is Outlook. While it sounds to me that the SQL Lite file you're talking about is a different one from Outlook's here are instructions for rebuilding the Outlook SQL Lite database

Rebuild Outlook Profile:

Go to where the mail database is stored, 

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/Main Profile/Data (on mac) and delete or simply move the "Outlook.sqllite" file.

Now, assuming you have not changed your default profile, simply open outlook and you should be prompted that there is a problem and outlook needs to rebuild.

If you did change your profile, change it back to 'Main Profile'.

Thanks to iTurbo

Answer 5

Hi Jim,

thanks for getting in touch with me. Using a new profile is not an option as it might reoccur even with a different profile at a later point. I'd prefer getting to the bottom of this and fix the issue for potentially all macOS users.

Kind regards,

Oliver Philipp Noack