Question : Why do pivot tables continually corrupt excel sheets?

I work in a mixed environment vis a vis office versions. Recently, an employee began including pivot tables in a wide variety of excel sheets. One by one, these are being corrupted and damaged beyond repair. I believe many users need some office updates. Is there a particular reason why pivot tables corrupt excel sheets and is there anything beyond updates that can prevent this kind of phenomenom?

Answer : Why do pivot tables continually corrupt excel sheets?

Mescronomicon,

Are the file being 'shared'?

Excel does not handle 'Shared' workbooks reliably. They are often corrupted at random and apparently without cause. Clearly there is a cause but it has not yet been isolated and fixed by MS. There is nothing you can do to avoid shared workbooks corrupting. The ONLY thing that can be done is to make them single user.

To help you with the single user file system try adopting this approach instead. It does work rather well so it's worth doing. First make the file(s) single user. Second edit everyone's user profile in Excel - Tools/Options/General/UserName and in there put the person's name and telephone extension number. Then whenever you attempt to open a file that someone else is using, a dialogue box will pop-up telling you who is the current user - and it tells you their telephone extension number! The new user can opt to either call the current user or open the file as read-only.

For Office 2007:  Office Button > Excel Options >Popular tab >User name

Hope that helps

Patrick