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Corrupted Word/Excel file


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#1
thardiek

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Just this morning I had a number of users tell me that they could no longer open "some" word and excel files. Before I got to the office...I received an email from a user that said that his machine had found a virus because ...of course...he opened a bogus Wells Fargo email.

So shortly after this is when people started telling me about the problems with other files. I cannot find any rhyme or reason for the problem. The only common thing is that it is a hit and miss scenario and the error from Word states that the file cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents. Excel files say cannot open the files because the file format or file extension is not valid - Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file. There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with these file...in other words...icon seems fine, file size is not "0", etc. Machines are on a Windows network Server 2008 STD R2 with network shares. It seems to only be "some" Word and Excel files. These files were OK yesterday...as a matter of fact - my only solution at this point is to run virus scans (all local..Windows Security Essentials) and restore the files one by one (or directories) from previous night's backup.

I could turn the other way and forget about it....but I am leary to do so since I really don't know what caused it and why it wasn't more of the files. Problem is across any computer on the network so I can't believe that it is a corruption inside of Office on all of these machines. I have tried changing the file extensions, opening the Html file, copied the contents of the sheet to another new file. I have even tried some word and excel file recovery software but these simply say that the files are pretty much dead.


Any recommendations would be appreciated.
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#2
starjax

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Sorry for the delay in responding, I just now saw this post. Did you resolve it? A lot of these type of virus hide the original file as a system hidden file and creates a fake copy. Would need more detail on what it found and the nature of the error in order to assist further.
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#3
gold

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I am having the exact same issue.

  • Windows Server 2008 environment.
  • It seems to be only one share but almost all the files appear to be corrupt. Word, Excel and PDF's etc.
  • There is Sophos deployed on individual clients and I'm running a scan on the share now.
  • I can use previous version to restore the entire drive last Tuesday (files are okay then), but that's not exactly great new for users with updated documents.
  • Can anyone shed any light on this, any help would be much appreciated.
Callum
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#4
PhrantiQ

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I am having the exact same issue.

  • Windows Server 2008 environment.
  • It seems to be only one share but almost all the files appear to be corrupt. Word, Excel and PDF's etc.
  • There is Sophos deployed on individual clients and I'm running a scan on the share now.
  • I can use previous version to restore the entire drive last Tuesday (files are okay then), but that's not exactly great new for users with updated documents.
  • Can anyone shed any light on this, any help would be much appreciated.
Callum


First and foremost, welcome to Geeks To Go's forums! I hope you stick around after we've assisted you in resolving this issue, as there is a lot of great members and information available on Geeks To Go's site. Now that the pleasantries have been said, let's discuss your issue at hand. It is highly recommended you make your own post/thread, as your issue may sound like this users but may be completely different in solving it. We also like to keep each users issue on it's own thread so if we reply to you differently than them, it doesn't get super complicated. So if you make your own thread, we will be sure to make some recommendations for resolving it.

@thardiek: Post back with the current status and if you still need assistance we'll see what we can do.
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#5
starjax

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Well you should probably be posting in the malware forum.

quick check to perform. view the share and show all files (hidden and system). What I have experienced in the past is that they create a fake copy of the file, hiding the rest as system/hidden. easy enough to delete the fake files and reset the files back to normal. may not be the case here.
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#6
starjax

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Please go to the malware forum and follow the instructions at the top....Especially the CLICK HERE.

That will give you several steps that will help you clean up 70 percent of all problems by yourself. If at the end of the process you are still having difficulty--and you may not be-- then post an OTListIt log in THAT forum.
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#7
chewinggum

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We're having a similar issue with several users at our agency also. For the users that had network documents affected we were able to restore good copies from back ups. However, users that had files on the local PC get corrupted are for the moment out of luck. Does anyone have a solution for this issue yet?
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