You receive an error message when you access files from a floppy disk in Excel (214042)

SYMPTOMS

When you access a file directly from a floppy disk, you may receive an error message if you remove the disk from the drive while the file is still open.

NOTE: The information in this article assumes that you are using a single floppy disk drive. If your computer has two or more floppy disk drives, this information applies only if you remove a disk from a floppy disk drive (for example, drive A) and insert another disk into the same disk drive.

Error Messages You May Receive When You Open a File

In Microsoft Excel, if you attempt to open a file from a floppy disk, you may receive the following message

'A:\pathname could not be found. Check the spelling of the file name, and verify that the file location is correct.

If you are trying to open the file from your list of most recently used files on the File menu, make sure that the file has not been renamed, moved or deleted.

where A is the floppy disk drive you are trying to access and pathname is the path and name of the file.

Error Messages You May Receive When You Save a File

If you open a file from a floppy disk, and you insert a different floppy disk in the disk drive, when you attempt to save the file to the disk, one of the following error messages may appear

Microsoft Excel cannot access the file 'A:\pathname. There are several possible reasons:

The file name or path name does not exist.
The file you're trying to open is being used by another program. Close the document in the other program, and try again.
The name of the workbook you're trying to save is the same as the name of another document that is read-only. Try saving the workbook with a different name.

where A is your computer's floppy disk drive, and pathname is the path and name of the file.

-OR-

ERROR Reading Disk in Drive A: Please Insert disklabel With Serial Number serialnumber in Drive A:

where A is your computer's floppy disk drive, disklabel is the label of the floppy disk and serialnumber is the serial number of the floppy disk.

CAUSE

You may receive the first error message describe in the "Symptoms" section when you are attempting to open a file if the second floppy disk does not contain the file that you are trying to access, or if the pathname for the file is incorrect. This problem most commonly occurs when you are using the list of recently used files at the bottom of the File menu.

You may receive the second error message when you click Save on the File menu and the original path of the file does not exist on the second floppy disk.

The third error message appears because Microsoft Excel requires file sharing. The error message occurs because of the way in which the file-sharing program keeps track of open files. When you open a file from a floppy disk, the serial number (if one exists) of the floppy disk (for example, 2B4A-1ACA), is read into memory. If you attempt to save an open file to a floppy disk that has a different serial number than the floppy disk it was opened from, you may receive the error message.

A disk formatted with the Format command included with Microsoft operating systems DOS 5 or later will contain serial numbers.

NOTE: This error message will not appear if the floppy disks do not have serial numbers.

WORKAROUND

Opening Files from Floppy Disks

To avoid receiving an error message when you open files from floppy disks, copy the files to your hard disk before you open them.

This is the recommended workaround because opening files from and saving files to the hard disk drive is faster than using a floppy disk drive; in addition, saving to the hard disk drive allows you to avoid problems caused by lack of space on floppy disks.

Saving File to a Floppy Disk

To avoid receiving an error message when you save a file to a floppy disk, use the Save As command on the File menu instead of the Save command.