Saving an Excel (for Mac) file to a disk

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Hello All,

I am having a frustrating experience with my Excel software in that when I try to save the file I am working with to a disk, it is unreadable when accessed through the disk. I am able to save pdf. files and read them on the disk, but for some reason when I try to save an Excel file from Microsoft office for Mac, the text turns into symbols and the format is unrecognizable. Any ideas?
 

chscag

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How are you saving the Excel files? Are you saving them as native Excel files or are you inadvertently choosing another format? If the files have correctly been burned to the CD and are saved as native Excel files, you should be able to read them.
 
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I have been saving in the xls. format. I have been having to email the files to a windows pc and then saving to a cd, which works just fine.

I appreciate your help with this.
 

chscag

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I guess the next question is how you're writing the files to the CD with your Mac and which program are you using to write the files?
 
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I've been dragging and dropping between Finder windows, then burning to the CD.
 
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chas_m

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Hold on.

You're working on a file and trying to save it to ... a CD-R?

Please describe EXACTLY what you are doing step-by-step since we can't see what you're talking about.

I think perhaps you are under the impression that you can create a multi-session CD that is treated like a big floppy disc. Macs don't do that (neither does Windows, but proprietary software on Windows will do it).
 
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I am filling out an Excel spreadsheet created by a state agency which I in turn need to submit back to them on a CD-R. I save the file to Documents, open another Finder window and drag and drop the file to the disk drive to burn onto the disk. There are two files that need to be on there, one is an excel file, the other a pdf. After I burn them to the disk I go back to check that everything is ok by opening the files on the disk. The pdf. file can be opened and read easily...everything works perfectly. The excel file on the other hand is completely unreadable when re-opened on the disk.
 

chscag

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Are you checking the Excel file after saving it to the documents folder? In other words, have you tried opening the file to see if it was OK before burning it to disk? If the file is OK from there, the only other thing I can think of is that it's not burning correctly.
 
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Yes, I have checked it and everything is fine with the excel file. I have had to email it to a windows based computer and burn it to a disk from there, which works just fine.
 

chscag

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Well, that leaves only the burning from your Mac. That's all I can tell you since we're not sitting in front of your machine. Somehow the file(s) are not being burned properly to the CD from your Mac.

What I do suggest, however, is that you use a different program to burn the file to CD. I'm not sure what you're using now (perhaps Disk Utility?) but here's a free program you can download and use instead. It's called "Burn" and can be downloaded from here.

Let us know.
 

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