Problem opening files in Office 2011

shoeshine said:

recently upgraded a MBP from 10.6 to 10.9 and am encountering an error where Word and Excel no longer open some of my word and excel files. it claims it can't open files with special characters (see attached photo). HOWEVER, the file in question doesn't actually have any of the aforementioned special characters. it has some spaces.... but nothing out of the ordinary.

any thoughts?

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Click to expand...

When was the last time you updated MS Office?

You've encountered a long-standing bug in Office 2011 (Win Office 2007/10 both had the bug too).

There's three other locations that one of the "illegal" characters may be - in the name of the volume(s) that either Office or the file reside, in the name of the directory/folder the file resides, or (in Excel) one (or more) of the worksheet/tab names.

A fourth source of this error is if the file you're wanting to open is linking to a file with one of the "illegal" characters in its director, filename, or worksheet name.

I went through the same thing when I moved from SL too. Had to rename several files and directories... No problems since with Office 2011.