Exported XLS files turning RED

Hi there.

My office is in the process of switching from PC to Mac. There are 15 of us, and 5 have now made the switch, but a lot of the company documents and templates remain in MS Office formats.

This seems like it might be a small export error somewhere, but this is what I am facing:

On the Mac
1. Open XLS document template (with macros) in Numbers.
2. Edit document.
3. Export to XLS file.
4. Email XLS file to a PC.

On the PC
5. Open above XLS file in Excel, works fine, start editing.
6. During the edit process, if you copy a sheet to a new sheet or new book, Excel goes and changes all cells that didn't have a background colour (90% of the sheet), into having a RED background.
7. This problem is not local. When repeated through Numbers on the other Macs in the office, the above porting causes the sheet background to turn RED in Excel on all PCs in the office.

I cannot find any references to this on Mac Forums, so I am writing a new thread. Apologies (in advance) if there is already a thread with the same problem that I just couldn't find.

Looking for a solution, haste appreciated.

Thank you.

H180

On the Mac
1. Open XLS document template (with macros) in Numbers.
2. Edit document.
3. Export to XLS file.
4. Email XLS file to a PC.

Click to expand...

How were the Excel XLS documents originally created? PC MS Office or Mac MS Office? Sorry, but I can't seem to follow what you're doing to move XLS sheets from a PC to the Mac. And why use iWork Numbers to open the documents to edit them and then email them back to a PC?

You did say you were switching to Macs? That's why what you've done above is a bit confusing.

Regards.

Sorry for not being too clear.
On the Mac, I (personally) am not running Office for Mac, only iWorks (for now).

The document I am editing, is a monthly update document where I need to update several sheets within one book, for accounts and so on, was made on MS Office on a PC. The office manager who then "manages" my monthly statements, copies sheets from my document into a separate central Excel file for record keeping and account management.

Hence the need to copy sheets from one XLS document (created on MS Office on a PC, edited on Numbers) into a separate XLS document (created on MS Office on a PC, edited in Excel on a PC).

Is that any clearer?

OK, I understand what you're doing. Thanks for posting back.

As for the red background of the sheets, I haven't tried to duplicate the problem as I do not have iWork. I'm using Office 2008 on the Mac and Office 2007 on the PC and have not run into that anomaly.

What I suggest is posting this same question to the MS Mac Office forum specifically to the Excel folks. Very helpful folks hang out there. I use that forum myself often when I have Office problems.

Here is the LINK

I hate to put you off somewhere else, but this is one I have never run into.

Regards.

chscag said:

Here is the LINK

Click to expand...

Thank you for your help and the link. I have posted the issue on the Excel Forums there and will be eagerly awaiting a reply. As you can imagine, this is a really peculiar problem, one that has forced me to for the first time in over 4 years of using a Mac, to post an entry on the Mac Forums.

Thanks again,

H180