On 3/14/2012 3:44 PM, eric at megageek.com wrote:
> I have an excel spreadsheet that has to have a date cell in the format
> dd/mm/yy. No problem. I set the language to English "UK" and I can select
> that format.
Tried any alternative software? Like LibreOffice (formerly
OpenOffice.org)? Totally Free: http://www.libreoffice.org/
Or if it's something non-confidential and you don't mind sharing, shoot
me a copy off-list and I might be able to assist.
I don't think you have a file corruption problem. But FWIW, if anyone
DOES run into such a thing - like MS Office just hanging when you try to
open a file, Libre or Open Office are about the best recovery tools around.
Eg: coworker had lots of time invested in 300+ page Word 'Doc. PC
crashes. Afterward, Word hangs when trying to open it again, despite
the "auto save" feature being on. Tried 4 versions of Word, from 2000 -
2007 and the free "MS Word Viewer" -- every one of them does the SAME
DANG THING - hangs while opening it. Because the code is probably
identical in all 5 programs. And MS figures they're infallible, thus
the code is written with NO fault tolerance for a corrupted document.
The open source products mentioned had to reverse engineer Microsoft's
proprietary file format. And knew and admitted they couldn't figure it
all out. So their code is smart enough to "read around" things it
doesn't understand, and when that happens, usually loses some pretty
formatting, but all the text is still intact.
In the above case, OpenOffice.org Writer read the whole .doc file
intact, save for one paragraph of partial text and garbled gibberish,
but was happy to re-save it as a .doc file that Word could then read!
ie: >99.8% of document recovered, that WAS a total loss using MS's own
product. We now just use Libre Office at the company.
-Wayne
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