we've received an email with an excel sheet attachement (338KB large)

After we saved the attachments it is 0Kb.

When trying to open it straight away by double-click Excel comes up with the error:
The file format and extension of "name of the excel file.xls" don't match. The file could be corrupted or unsafe. unless you trust its source, don't open it.
Do you want to open it anyway? > Yes / No / Help

We've changed the extension to .xlsx - .xlsm
We know that the drive/folder has write permissions etc.

Any help, please.

Hi,

If you open the Excel attachment directly from the Outlook message, could it be opened? If yes, try the "Save As" option in Excel and save it to local, check the result.

You can also start Outlook in Safe Mode to try again:

Press Win + R, type "outlook.exe /safe" in the Run window, press Enter.

When Outlook starts in Safe Mode, all the 3rd-party add-ins are disabled, please try to save the Excel attachment again to check if the issue persists.

Regards,

Melon Chen
TechNet Community Su

Hi Melon Chen,

I've tried both your suggestions, but neither works.

In both cases the attachment is still saved as 0kb's

Hi,

Could the attachment be opened in email directly?

Does the issue occur to other types of attachments?

Regards,

Melon Chen
TechNet Community Su

No opening the attachemnet directly in outlook also gives the error.
This is the only attachment with this problem.

Hi,

Then it seems the attachment has been corrupted.

Please logon the web-based email/OWA, check if the attachment can be opened. Or you will need to contact the sender of this email to provide another copy of this attachment.

Regards,

Melon Chen
TechNet Community Su

The user states that the attachement (excelsheet) is in his possesion for quite some time.
He used to work on the sheet normally, but after the installation of office 2013 the problem occured.
To me it seems it has all to do with the new version of office, correct me if i'm wrong.

Because the original file came from a customer it isn't quite easy to ask them to send a new one (unprofessional)

update: when forwarding the email with attachement it is received by the receiver still as 338Kb file, but opening in OWA doesn't help either

Hi,

It means the user has kept the email in a "local" .pst for quite a long time? If so, please run the Scanpst.exe tool to repair the possible issues in the .pst file, check if this can help:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/272227

If the problem persists, I'd like to have a look at the email. To protect the user's privacy, please send the email to our email address:

ibsofc@microsoft.com

Please add the url of this thread in the email for easy tracking.

Regards,

Melon Chen
TechNet Community Su

Hi,

I received your file, it seems this file has been corrupted, I tried "Open and Repair" but this didn't help.

You may try some 3rd-party tools to recover the file, but as the file size is only 446 B as I can see(or 0 kb), there is a possibility that it can't be recovered since there is actually few data in it.

Regards,

Melon Chen
TechNet Community Su

thanks for the effort and time spend Melon.

Will look for any 3th party, but like you state... the file may be corrupted beyond repair ;)