"We found a problem with some content" Error on opening

Morning,

I've been working on a workbook for months now, it contains form controls, VBA and a table which is connected to another source (on SharePoint).

yesterday I started getting this error:

"We found a problem with some content in "workbook". Do you want us to try and recover as much as we can? If you trust the source of the workbook, click Yes"

If I click no, it doesn't open

If i click yes, i get another message "Excel was able to open the file by repairing or removing the unreadable content - Repaired Records: Drawing from /xl/drawings/drawing2.xml part (Drawing shape)"

I can't see anything missing from the workbook

Furthermore, when i save the "repaired" version then close and reopen, same error! So whatever has supposedly been removed seems to reappear.

I haven't added anything to the workbook in the last couple of days that i could imagine would cause this.

I tried restoring previous versions of the workbook but as soon as i save them and reopen i get the same error.

Copying all the sheets and VBA to another workbook isn't practical as this is months of work with hundreds of named ranges, lots of VBA, drop down boxes, formulas etc

I'm on office 365.

any advice/help greatly appreciated!

Thanks

UPDATE - i've managed to restore a previous version which opens without the error. But the plot thickens.. if i open this document, make no changes, save and exit, when i go back in, it throws the error! any idea what could be causing this? Thanks

Hi AliGW, thanks for replying! My problem is.. i can't take out the sensitive data to post it on here as as soon as i save the document it throws the error! Unless its any use me posting the corrupted version?

There are many pages if you google /xl/drawings/drawing1.xml error

perhaps there problem is the same as yours.


Your profile also still says 2010 not 365 and should be changed

I've made a copy and removed the sensitive data but this now gives the error on opening

it seems like any change and/or saving corrupts the workbook?

davsth - we only moved to 365 this month and i didnt recall this info being in my profile, now updated. i have spent 2 days trying to solve this online to no avail before posting here.

thanks everyone

I tried removing all illustrations (pictures, icons, autotext), saving as xls, converting to HTML (which lost all my functionality), removing formulas, removing the worksheets that were added this week

Yesterday i painstakingly copied each worksheet to a new workbook then imported all the vba and copied in all the formulas, worked fine once then as soon as i saved any changes i got the error again

So i now have a restored version of the workbook which opens fine

BUT as soon as i hit "save" or "save as", the corruption occurs

I've been working on this book for months with no issues and even restoring back to versions pre-corruption doesnt seem to make any difference. this is why i'm thinking its a wider system issue and/or to do with the 365 upgrade

can you point me in the right direction to review my code for necessary changes?

Unfortunately time is something i don't have, this is months worth of work and i'm due to finish up this week indefinitely (medical) this project was due to be completed before i finished and i was 98% of the way there before this corruption occurred. There doesnt appear to be any logic in it - it was working fine for months and i can restore to last weeks version (pre-corruption) which opens fine but as soon as i save it (having made no changes) it corrupts. I already rebuilt the workbook yesterday and saved at each stage, it all works fine until it doesnt. but its not the same stage that its crashing at - i would understand if it was every time i added a certain formula/object/code but it isnt. I am concerned about wasting time starting from scratch only to hit the same issue if it is indeed something to do with the Office upgrade. Appreciate not an easy problem to solve, i just don't know what else i can do. Thanks anyway.

Only other thing that might be relevant is that another issue i noticed around the same time was that many of my combo boxes (form controls) resized to 0 height - this never happened before as they were all set to match row heights.

I've deleted all the combo boxes and it does appear to be working.. these boxes were one of the earliest things to be added to my workbook and never caused any issues before. Has there been a change in 365 that could cause this? Now i just have to really hope that adding them all back in doesnt result in the same issue!