Unable to load Excel file. Error: element not found.

[Eugenia Tenezakis]

Hi everyone!

I am trying to import an excel file from a shared folder on Dropbox into Stata and I get this error message "file /Users/eugenietenezakis/Dropbox/Coffee East Africa, Agronomy Reporting, ZB/2019/13. March April/input/210524_ZB_2019C_M> onthly_Attendance_Database_Mar_Apr.xlsx could not be loaded."

I tried to:
1. open other excel files, they work fine.
2. I also tried to import this file from a local folder on my computer, and I get the same error message. Please note that the excel file is not corrupted.
3. I tried to import the excel file on Stata from another computer and it works! (I have a MacBook, and I tried from a PC).
4. I tried to find an answer from Statalist, and the only answer I found was copypasting all the database into a new excel sheet (which is not possible given that several people work on this same file, and that it would considerably slow down the workflow).

Please note that I am using Stata 14.0 version (the other computer I managed to open the file from also had Stata 14 downloaded).

Anybody has faced this challenge before?

Thank you!!!!

[William Lisowski]

In the Statalist topic linked to below, the conclusion was "It seems to be an incompatibility problem between Office 365 and Stata 12. Using an older version of office (tested on Office 2011 for Mac), or upgrading to a newer version of Stata (tested for Stata15 SE), solved the issue."

https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...on-new-macbook

Based on your experience, it is possible that the problem is an incompatibility between Office 365 and versions of Stata for Mac before version 15.

Also, among the "other Excel files" you tested in Step 1, did they include other Excel files located in the Dropbox folder most recently saved by the same person who saved the file that does not open? To figure out who has edited a file, you'd have to right-click on the file in your local Dropbox folder and view version history. You seem to be accessing a file that is updated monthly. Can you open any older version of the same sort of database?

[Eugenia Tenezakis]

Thank you William for your answer!

"Other Excel files" include other excel files located in the Dropbox folder, indeed, and saved by the same person who saved the file that does not open (therefore, I concluded that it was not due to this other person's computer or Stata version).

Regarding the file I cannot currently open, I was alsp unable to open an older version of the same document, although it was created by another person than the one who saved the file for the last time.

Across the Dropbox excel files, I need to use, I encounter the same issue only for some of them... although all files have exactly the same structure.

[Kevin Crow (StataCorp)]

Is there any chance you can send the Excel file in question to [email protected] so that I can try and reproduce the error? I would also make sure Stata 14 is updated to 29 Jan 2018.