Help Excel question
 

Last night, I wanted to input some info but all , I mean all my files are clean with nothing on it. This is on my lap top also. What does this mean? Any thoughts? Am I in deep siht? I have not been on my desk top all day untill late night.

It says, file could not found. Check spelling of file name and verify location is correct.

If you are trying "File" and "Open" make sure at the bottom you are asking for ALL files

Regardless of extension.

If what daepp said does not work, did you save it to a thumb drive or disc then forget to reinsert said device? (it happens)

No, not to the thumb drive, and Deapp it isn't working. If anything happens to one file, I understand, but this happened to every single one of my Excel files including the ones on my lap top. The two computers are not linked in anyway.

Where are you saving your files?

hard disk

If your laptop and your PC no longer are showing .xls files on the same day on 2 different hard disks.....you probably have a virus from an email you opened on both devices or from....well one of those sites possibly.

What OS? You might try a System Restore.

I will try that.

My lap top had not been used or turned on for over a month. The last time data was inputted on my desk was 5 days ago. They are both Macs. I have no idea what operation system. I think Mt Lion. How can I find out ?

I'm no Microsoft expert and I work on a Mac. I had a similar issue and the problem was Office had lost my identity. I repaired my identity and all my files returned.

Just to make sure what the situation is. You have a desktop and a laptop, both Macs running OS X, maybe Mountain Lion. There are some Excel files on the desktop and the laptop (are they the same files, if so how do you keep them synchronized? Or are they different files?). Now all those files appear to have disappeared. Right?

Couple things I can think of:

1. Do a search using Finder. In other words, bypass Office/Excel, use the Mac OS to look for the files.

2. Are you logged in as your normal user? Any chance you logged out then logged back in as a different user, so you can't see the first user's folders?

3. Check your backups.

4. Any other files appear to be missing?

Otherwise - are you using iCloud or other offsite data storage site? Are you using a backup app? Are you using anything that tries to synchronize the desktop and notebook's files? Where did you keep the Excel files - in your user folder | Documents. or on your Desktop, or elsewhere?

If you know the name of an excel file, try searching for it using the search function up top, not in Excel. Once the file comes up, double click and see if Excel comes up automatically. If not, right click on the file, and select 'Open With' and select Excel, and check the box that says something like 'Open all such files with Excel''

-Z

Try File->Open Recent.

If none of the recent files open or are not found they were either deleted, moved or you saved them to a place other than your local hard drive. Thumbdrive, cloud......

but Word files that are saved works. I tried searching without luck. Anything else you guys can think of? I am going nuts. Nothing gets saved on a thumb drive or cloud

Can you 'see' the files in the folder hard drive where you originally saved them to?

If you double-click the hard drive icon on your desktop, and then click on 'look171' (or whatever userid you use), you should see a bunch of folders including 'Documents' which is the default location to save most files.

When you click 'open' file, you may not have the location pointing to the right folder.

-Z

If you are on Mt Lion, Open a new Finder window, click All my files from the left sidebar, view by list or icon.

Will show you every file you have broken out by category, look for xls, xlsx, csv

OK, Very strange. In two of my folders, all the files are back. All other excel files are still blank or it has this "File could not be found" thing pops up just like before. I did not do a thing to it. I am scratching my head now!

Files "blank" - you mean the folder is empty (appears to have no files in it)?

Check your Recycle Bin.

Yes, John. The icon is empty or blank and say files could not be found. I will look in my recycling bin

I found three files there. How the heck did it get there?