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TwinkleTwinkle 

Warning Message when open file in Excel 2007 exported from Salesforce Report

When I try to open a file in Excel 2007 exported from Salesforce Report, I receive the following warning message:
The file you are trying to open, xxxx.xls is in a different format than specified by the file extension. Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now?

Help text from Excel 2007 reveals that "The warning message is a user-notification function that was added to Excel 2007. The warning message can help prevent unexpected problems that might occur because of possible incompatibility between the actual content of the file and the file name extension."

 

A case logged with Salesforce replied that they do not have such problem. Does anyone encounter the same issue? Is there any compatibility issue on MS Office 2007 with Salesforce? Any advise is greatly appreciated.

 

Best Answer chosen by Admin (Salesforce Developers) 
ShikibuShikibu

The file created when salesforce exports a report to a spreadsheet is actually html, not standard xls format. Here's an example. Excel is willing to open it, but if you save as xls it's a very different beast. This html format is not easy to open in some other spreadsheet apps.

 

 

<head><META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"></head><table><tr><th filter=all>Lead Source</th><th filter=all>Lead Owner</th><th filter=all>First Name</th><th filter=all>Last Name</th><th filter=all>Company / Account</th><th filter=all>Lead Status</th><th filter=all>Country</th><th filter=all>Create Date</th></tr><tr><td style="vnd.ms-excel.numberformat:@">Training Feedback Web Form</td><td style="vnd.ms-excel.numberformat:@">First Last</td></tr>
 
 
 


All Answers
jpizzalajpizzala
Does the file open appropriately when you click on "Yes" in the dialogue window?


TwinkleTwinkle
The data seems to look ok, but that is only on small set of data whereby we can verify. For huge file, we are not sure if there is any impact as we can't possibly scan through the whole file to ensure the data are intact.


ShikibuShikibu
The file created when salesforce exports a report to a spreadsheet is actually html, not standard xls format. Here's an example. Excel is willing to open it, but if you save as xls it's a very different beast. This html format is not easy to open in some other spreadsheet apps.
 
 
<head><META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"></head><table><tr><th filter=all>Lead Source</th><th filter=all>Lead Owner</th><th filter=all>First Name</th><th filter=all>Last Name</th><th filter=all>Company / Account</th><th filter=all>Lead Status</th><th filter=all>Country</th><th filter=all>Create Date</th></tr><tr><td style="vnd.ms-excel.numberformat:@">Training Feedback Web Form</td><td style="vnd.ms-excel.numberformat:@">First Last</td></tr>
 
 
 
This was selected as the best answer
TwinkleTwinkle
Thanks Shikibu for the info. Do you know if there is any means to overcome this annoying message?


ShikibuShikibu
Sorry, I'm not aware of any.


corydeppencorydeppen
 
You can refer to the following article:
 
Excel 2007 Extension Warning On Opening Excel Workbook from a Web Site
 
 
 


Always ThinkinAlways Thinkin
I got tired of seeing that message too and so I just export all my reports as csv instead of .xls. Once they are opened, I'll save them as .xls if I have to share them but often I'm just exporting something to see it in Excel rather than Salesforce and so csv is fine for my purposes.