Excel from windows issues

[SAMCR0]

The problem I having is not being able to save excel files

I was running office home & student 2007 on a windows xp system. All the excel files were saved onto a external hard drive. I have now bought an iMac & installed Office for Mac Home & student 2011

However when I open a file from the external drive it comes up as (read only) & if I make changes & try to save it back on the external drive I get the following message - You do not have permission to save files to External drive folder name

Make sure you have write access for this location, or select a different location

I'm basically using excel to type out invoices so keep the same layout I just make a few changes & then save it with the new invoice number. I have tried saving it to the desktop & then dragging it into the external drive folder but this doesn't work either.

Any help would be gratefully received

 

[dwig]

The problem I having is not being able to save excel files ... when I open a file from the external drive it comes up as (read only)...

It may well be that the external HD's format is one that MacOSX can read but not write. NTFS is one such format and one that is the standard Win HD format.

One test is to copy a file to your Mac's internal HD using Finder and then open that copy in Excel/Mac and see if you can then edit and same. If so, the drive format is the issue.

You could also use the Mac's Disk Utility or use Finder's Get Info to examine the drive to see what format it uses. If it uses NTFS then that is your problem.

If the HD is formated NTFS, you will likely want to copy all of the files onto another HD formated either exFAT (readable and writable with both MacOSX and Windows) or HFS+ (Mac Only).

 

[SAMCR0]

It may well be that the external HD's format is one that MacOSX can read but not write. NTFS is one such format and one that is the standard Win HD format.

One test is to copy a file to your Mac's internal HD using Finder and then open that copy in Excel/Mac and see if you can then edit and same. If so, the drive format is the issue.

You could also use the Mac's Disk Utility or use Finder's Get Info to examine the drive to see what format it uses. If it uses NTFS then that is your problem.

If the HD is formated NTFS, you will likely want to copy all of the files onto another HD formated either exFAT (readable and writable with both MacOSX and Windows) or HFS+ (Mac Only).

Thanks for your help Dwig you are right the external drive is formatted to NTFS

I copied a file to the internal drive & it did open up & had lost the (read Only) tag, however I still couldn't save another copy after making changes to the drive as it said I did not have permission again, but it did allow me to save it to the desktop

Is this the sort of drive you are talking about that will work with both systems

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/comput...rtable-hard-drive-1-tb-blue-21812044-pdt.html

 

[mgroot]

It doesn't depend on the drive but on the way it's formatted. You can keep using NTFS and write to it if you install this e.g. https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

Or you can use this if you want to mess around yourself (this is free) http://www.macbreaker.com/2014/06/how-to-enable-writing-to-ntfs-hard.html

 

[SAMCR0]

OK thanks

To be honest I'm not that good on these things so it would be easier for me just to buy a new drive & start from scratch

 

[mgroot]

OK thanks

To be honest I'm not that good on these things so it would be easier for me just to buy a new drive & start from scratch

But you will need to reformat that drive as well.. It probably won't work out of the box, most drives are formatted as NTFS which means you still can't write to it

If you buy that Paragon driver, it's a matter of opening the .dmg and installing that driver and it works.. You can't really get it much easier than that

 

[dwig]

OK thanks

To be honest I'm not that good on these things so it would be easier for me just to buy a new drive & start from scratch

This might be the best approach as reformatting your existing drive will destroy all data on the drive.

If you Mac's internal drive has adequate space, you could do the following:

1. create a folder on your Mac's internal drive
2. copy the contents (only what you need to keep) from the external drive to that new folder
3. run Disk Utility (in the Utilities sub-folder in Applications)
4. in DU, select the external drive and choose the Erase tab.
5. select the new format; either "Mac Os extended journaled" for Mac only use or "exFAT" for both Mac & Win
6. once reformatted, you can then copy the data back to the external drive and remove it from your internal drive

If you buy a new drive you will have to do the Disk Utility reformat (Erase) steps unless you choose one that is pre-formatted for Mac (usually spec'd as HFS+)

 

[SAMCR0]

Just installed the Paragon software & everything seems to be working fine & dandy.

Thank you both for your help