After the recent installation of the KB918419 Security Update for Excel
update on our network, problems occurred with a number of reports that we run
regularly. These reports are coded in Perl and generate formatted Excel
spreadsheets from a database. On opening the spreadsheets Excel claims the
file is "damaged" and must be repaired. Repair seems to involve the removal
of all formatting.
Removal of the security update from our system caused the problem to stop,
but this is a temporary solution.
Removal of the code from the reports that sets the column size also solves
the problem, but does not do much for the appearance of the spreadsheet.
I am somewhat puzzled as to why a security update should have problems with
the formatting of columns. Has anyone else encountered this problem?