The Problem:
Trying to open CSV file that my app had generated kept causing the following message to appear in Excel:
Excel has detected that ‘balhblah.csv’ is an SYLK file, but cannot load it. Either the file has error or it is not a SYLK file format. Click OK to try to open the file in a different format’ , you may also get the message SYLK: File format is not valid
The solution:
After many hours of pulling my hair out trying to work it out I discovered that if you make the first letters “ID” of a text file Excel incorrectly assumes you are trying to open an SYLK file (whatever one of those is!).
Hope that helps!
PS Microsoft have a page on this now… http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/323626
I ran into this problem when creating a CSV file with the requirement that columns 1-2 of the first record – representing the first cell of the spreadsheet must contain uppercase “ID”.
I kept getting “Unable to load SYLK file…” Ichanged that to “Id” – but that was not acceptable to the program into which this file was input.
For the moment I have got around it by setting up the field as “ ID “ and seeing whther the next program is rigidly expecting :ID” in cols 1-2, or is it a “free-format field which allows for “ID” as floating characters.
One can only hope and pray!!!
waooo thanks for saving…!
still helping!
Great job! TNX!
Still working
good, still helping… but after six years Microsoft has not yet solved the bug ?
Microsoft will tell you it’s a feature 🙂
Still helping!
Thank you Alun for sharring this info – it has saved me pulling my hair and spending many hours to figure this out….
Thank you and bless you for sharring this info.
> 700 days later his post is still helping. Many thanks for saving me many hours of frustration.
Wes
10/20/2016 and it is still helping!!!
Still Helping
Still helping at 16 Feb 2017… I really have no words about this Microsoft Excel’s abomination.
24th Feb 2017, still helping
Still helping 24th March 2017
april 7 2017
still helping
Still helping 20 Avril 2017
Still helping at 25 APR 2017… 😀
Still helping at May 31, 2017
Still helping in 15 June 2017..yihaaa
july 18 2017!!!
Still Helping
Still helping
Still Helping!
Still helping!
7th September 2017!
3017 Still helping
Still helping at 03 Feb 2018
Still helping (16 March 2018) 😀
Still helping
March 2018 … still helping
April 2018 – still helping.
Thanks 🙂
Still helping… 26 Apr, 2018
Still helping in May 2018
June as well! It continues haha
Still Helping!!! November 27, 2018
I’m guessing you mean September 🙂
Still helping, November 13, 2018.
Still Helping Jan. 2019 !
23rd Oct 2017, Still helping.
Still helping, mates! thanks
METOO! 🙂
Still helping. Thanks
Still helping, Thanks a lot !!!
Still helping today July 13th 2018
Still helping at of Aug 13 2018. Amazing that MS has gone so long without addressing a basic bug.
Still helping
August 10/2017 and still helping!
Still Helping
Still helping. 6 years later.
Still helping
Haha still helping in 2018!! 🙂
Still helping!!
Still helping – 29 August 2018
Thank you!
And now still Helping
Glad to still be of help!
saved me today (7/18/18)
The way to fix this for a programmer is to put the apostrophe character (’) as the first character of the CSV file. Then when Excel opens it, it won’t say, “Error: its a SYLK file gone bad”.
Thanks.
Put an apostrophe at the beginning of the first field and this irritating error goes away
Another code warrior salutes you!
Thanks ! it helped..
refering to #5 above, the solution is not for the programmer or enyone else in the world to avoid using the characters ID in a CSV header. The solution is for Microsoft the remove such a stupid hard-coded logic.
Looking at the MS knowledge base this should be fixed in the most recent versions of excel
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323626
It’s not.
Still at 16 Feb 2017, it’s not.
Still at 25 Jan 2018, it’s not.
Still at 26 April 2018, it’s not.
Still not fixed as of today. Just ran into this exporting to Excel from a sql proc…a random piece of dumb luck I named the files starting with “ID”.
Not dumb at all! Lots of frameworks WANT you to name the key ID!!
i cant save excel file in .csv format error you cant save multiple sheet in format
how to save
plz reply me.
i cant save excel file in .csv format error you cant save multiple sheet in format
how to save
plz reply me.
Hi Khandu
You can’t save a multi-sheet excel file as a CSV because csv’s don’t support multiple pages. Simply save each worksheet as a desperate CSV and name them in a sensible way for the other person to import e.g. mydata_sheet1.csv, mydata_sheet2.csv and so on
Good luck!
Alun
THANK YOU , THANK YOU , THANK YOU
Thanks!! Still useful!
Wow, 2 years and a bit on and it’s still proving useful! Glad to have helped
This didn’t help me for my requirements…
What did help was this:
—Save file as a .csv and close it.
—Right click on the .csv file and Open with>Notepad
—Go to File>Save As
—Under Ecoding: select UTF-8
—Click Save
Thanks – this fixed it for me!
This helped me as well. Thank you!
Same here — thanks!
Thank you Mitch. Life saver. And thank you Alun for starting the whole topic.
HELL YEAH!!! Thanks.
Helped again, thanks
Yup, still helping.
Thanks!
Thank you!
Still a big help. Keep this alive (Incase you were thinking that no one is using this anymore)
received the error message during import of a custom csv file about 3 minutes ago.
googled it and this article resolved it in less than 60 secs.
thanks!!!!
And there was me thinking it was my programming skills that sucked. Microsoft, as usual. Pfft. Suckers.
On a serious note, thanks for the tip. I dread to think how many circles I would have went round if I didn’t discover it.
Changing ID to lower case id should also fix the problem.
We had to change from upper to lowercase to when saving from xlsx to csv. Other wise we would get the error.
That’s useful to know! Thanks
Thank you – this helped me out as well!
You are the best ! Thank you!!!!
Thank God for Google that found this.. I was pulling my hair out on this!
Thank you!!!! You saved me much frustration.
You saved my day. Lot of thanks. I have a csv file that has a column with header=“ID”. It was giving me SYLK error. But once I changed it to “Id”, it worked like magic.
Just ran into this problem. I have cell A1 of each of my CSV files as “ID”. Would’ve never figured this out on my own. Glad this post is still available here after so many years. Thank you so much for sharing. Cheers!
Glad to still be of help
Thank you !
I’m just thinking…thank GOD for the Internet!
Just another drive by thank you. This is more helpful than the offical MS help page on this topic.
GOD , Would have never figured out this.. wasted one whole day.
Thanks mate.
Thanks for saving me hours of investigating.
I want to have your babies. I love you. Thanks
Let’s us know how that works out! Thanks!
It’s the “The file you are trying to open, ‘x.csv’ is in a different format than specified by the extension…” that gets me.
Thanks for preventing me going blind looking for obscure and non-existent unprintable characters…
Wow. I never would have guessed that was the issue. I changed the first cell from “ID” to “dbID” and now the error is gone. lol
Thanks!
This is amazing. Thanks!
This is awesome help!
Thanks a lot!
Thank you!
thank you, thank you, thank you!
wow Thanks! still not fixed I see. and still helping…………
Thank you!
Thank you so much. Found this and fixed the error.
WOW!!!! Awesome! Thank you very much for this post!
Aargh! Thanks a lot – just wish I had seen your post a couple of hours earlier 😉
Wow!, thanks for your post! That helped so much!
D’oh!; thanks for the post. Very helpful
Thanks for taking away the pain – wish I’d checked your site YEARS ago. My previous solution was opening in Open Office then saving as .xls LOL
Omg — Thank You so much
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks man!
Merci !!!!!! Thank you !!!!! You just saved the day !
Thanks a lot!
Thank you so much for that info! Even though I have spent a few hours pulling my hair – I would never have arrived at that conclusion without your input.
Thanks a bunch!
This still occurs in Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 (version 14.0.7173.5000), although Microsoft doesn’t admit it on their KB support page.
I dont know what is more funny, the solution or how many csv files must begin with “ID”. Thanks for post.
Thanks – your post came up in a google and most helpful. I am in the process of moving to Softmaker Office 2016 having previously used MS Office 2003. When moving back and forth I hit this problem and assumed incorrectly it was Softmaker trouble. Yes my database has ID for the first field (column) and hits this problem.
thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are the best
worked
Running Excel 2016 in the year 2017 and this is still a problem that you helped me solve! Thank you!
thank’s bro , i just spend my 4 hours into this .
This article is now 5 years old and it’s still helping! Amazed MS haven’t fixed it but the occasional gift from my Amazon gift list and a few affiliate fees for adverts cover off the over 1200 visitors per month just to read this article!
Wow – I wasted 3 hours on this problem – As soon as I looked it up (finally – dumb of me to wait) your fix came up!
1st hit on google search, still an issue after all this time?
Thanks buddy. You saved a ton of time…
Thank you for sharing this. I was so confused by the error and would have spend countless hours on the same issue!
Still Helping
Thanks this helped me too, March 31st, 2017
Thank you so much for pulling your hair out for us!
Thanks … would never have figured that out!!!
Another happy camper….I would never have worked that out myself
…A thousand thanks mate !!!! 🙂
Still helping, thanks a million!
I solved this issue with:
Application.DisplayAlerts = False
Workbooks.Open Filename:=path, Local:=True
Application.DisplayAlerts = True
Where ‘path’ is a string variable with the path where the file is.
Obviously this is a VBA solution.
I hope this help you.
Thanks! VBA Solution shared!!
Nice!
Priceless information! This thread will live on as you keep saving lives out there in MS World. Thank you!!!!
Still helping 🙂
Yep.
And again today!
Still useful. Thanks man.
BR/ Costi A.
OMG, thank you for saving me so much time.
You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
This resolved my issue so quickly!
Well done.
What a random error, but it also just happened to me !
Is there anything we can do about it ?
My CSV file needs to have “ID” as the first element.
There is no way around it.
Why do you need ID as the first field? If you are outputting to Excel then you can choose anything as your output format. If you need to then send it on from there it you could then rename it once it is in the system or output it using a macro which renames the first column.
Alternatively make ID the last column? most imports should sort it out for you?
Aug 14, 2017 and still helping!
Aug 29, 2017 and still helping!
Wow, years later and this is still awesome. Thanks for the heads-up!
Thank you so much for sharing this info.Very useful.
Still helping. Thank you so much for this info.
We have discovered if CSV is changed to UTF-8, the SYLK problem disapears (without change ID to Id)
OMG ! How much time potentially this has saved me. THANK YOU for posting this information.
Thank you for the information.
For everyone who needs a workaround:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29012344/opening-csv-file
Thank u
AMAZING! Saved me 8 hours of hair pulling. Damn excel!! THANKS!!!
So my very first cell was the state Idaho, what are the odds?
stiiiiilll helping
Still Helping!
Ha Ha!! Still helping. I would never have worked that out!
Thanks was very useful
Still helping!
Cheers!
helpful defusing a panicked exec
Trust me still helping
This is the gift that keeps on giving
omg, thanks!
Such a simple solution for such an annoying issue. THANK YOU!
STILL HELPING! THANKS ALL
WHY IS THIS STILL AN ISSUE AFTER 4 YEARS?!
Thank you for the quick fix!
STILL HELPING after SIX years!!!!!! Thank you 🙂
Another two thumbs up!!
Still Helping! Thanks!
Still helping. Thanks!
Still Helping! Thanks!
Still Helping!
Still helping! 🙂 Thank you.
Yep still helping =D 2018! Thank you!
Haha this is amazing. Thank you for this.
Best post ever 😉 Saving me a bunch of time
Still Helping! Thank you.
Well done Alun. Magic internet
Thanks a lot
This is still helping as of February 15, 2018 – four years later. Microsoft has disabled the solution page listed above. Users now get the Microsoft version of the 404 File Not Found error, so can anyone explain WHY Excel does this? Or has anyone found the new link to Microsoft’s explanation?
Thanks a bunch! That prevented me from suicide 🙂
Still helping
Come on MS! This is a tiny task to fix – do it now!
Far too much monkey see, monkey do. Too clever by half! Are you aware that many people import csv files where the first cell contains ID? And they want them to be csv, nothing else.
24th Feb 2018 | Still Helping
26 Feb 2018 – same issue, sti9ll inresolved. Original poster’s work much appreciated
Thank you very much.
Thank you
Still helping
This is pathetic. Thanks to OP. Pulling my hair out trying to analyze data for my master’s thesis. I don’t have words for how angry I am at Microsoft right now.
Still helping.
Still helping March 2018!
This is still helping! April 2018!
Still helping 29th March 18.
6 years later and Microsoft still can’t be bothered to fix it. Amazing.
Still Helping April 18
Another one saved April 2018 from this, frankly, beyond pointless “feature”.
Thank you very much!
Thank you!!!! U da man!
Thanks Buddy 🙂
I found another option.no need to change the column heading order title. Just open a new excel and than open the file which you would like to open (SYLK format file), it will open this time.
Hope this works for you guys as well.
Thank you! Still help !
Jsanches
Thank you!
Still helping!!!!
Thanks!!
18th April 2018…
Still helping!!!
Thanks a ton, Alun!!
Just a feedback that I am not able to open MS link given though.
I mean. Just wow Microsoft. Because no one ever wants the first column of their CSV file to be “ID” do they?
Thanks! Another person saved hours of trouble by this.
So glad to find this, thanks!
day 2,304 and still helping!
Aaaaaand solved!
You rock.
“Get Bill Gates in here!”
I literally love you
9th May 2018
… and still helping!
Still Helping! Thank you
Saved the day 6 years later!
Still Helping!!, May 2018
Oh my goodness… This solution saved me hours. Thanks!
Lifesaver
thanks heaps for this.
Thanks a ton. Saved lot of time.
This answer will remain Gold for decades to come 😀
Thank you so much
Thank you.
God saved the world.
You saved my day.
I found this abomination again today. Can’t wait to switch off of M$ crap in a year.
Perfect!! HUGE HELP – thanks!
Just had this problem, you were the first result in Google, lol. Cheers buddy!
Thumbs up!
Still Helping! THANKS!!!
I’m glad your post came up first in the SERP’s. You saved me from pulling my own hair. 🙂
Thanks Dude,
You don’t know how how much time of mine you’ve saved.
GBU !! xD
Thanks you for the info!
Still helping haha
Much spam, such helpful
Thanks for the info!
Still helping
Thank You. It is help us 😉 fckng excel 😉
thanks a lot!!!It worked!!! in 2018 🙂
thanks
This post saved the day. It’s unbelievable that this hasn’t been fixed yet.
I think Microsoft would describe it as a feature not a bug…
Thanks for this so many years later!
I am quite certain that I told Excel that I was looking for text files (not slky or skly or ksly or Excel or any other type of file). Yes, I chose from a selection that Excel presented me with. I knew I wanted txt files… I chose a text file… even had a .txt extenstion… I told Excel this after it asked me… and wha??? It wants to tell me it’s a slksdksyr file?
How awful.
If Microsoft has any hand in building the AI that is suppose to rule the world one day, at least we now know we can just write “ID” on the bullets we shoot at the droids that come to farm us. They will have no defense.
Just change the first line of your address and your first name to ID.
They’ll never know who you are or where you live!
NEWEST issue: what if the file already was saved and I am trying to open it when I get this SYLK error?
I can’t get to the data to view it and fix it 🙁
Off the top of my head you could try opening it in a proper text editor like Sublime?
Or open a new sheet and open it as a datasource?
Big help. Thanks a lot.
Bern
Highlight of my weekend. Many thanks.
Love it
You save my day, Thanks you !!
wow, I almost can’t believe the ID stuff…saved my day too. Thanks!
Thank you sir. You are a GOD!
It helps again, yay!
OMG… Thanks so much!
What Connie says!
September 2018 …. still helping
I edited the csv in Notepad and changed the header row to have double quotes around all the headings, and it fixed the issue for my file. The quotes are not displayed when loaded in Excel and no warnings. Winning!
i.e.
“ID”,”Name”,”Email”
Yep, that’s another great way to fix the issue. Adding quotes means it’s just treated as a string and no preprocessing takes place. But like when people give you datasets with columns that have names with sql keywords like Select, from, where etc
Still helping…saved me many hours of troubleshooting…
Thanks a lot, you saved me many hours of troubleshooting.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
thanks
Can someone try to OPEN A SECOND TIME the file, after Excel gives you errors and opens a blank file ?
Just, keep the file (excel) open and double clic the file again. What happens there ?
Pierre C.
NEVER GIVE UP
for me it works, excel opens the file and displays its content
Well, it is 11.14.2018 and I just encountered the same issue! Oy vey!
Thank you a lot!!!
thanks!
Just save the file as a Unicode .txt file. Then rename it to csv and Bob’s your uncle.
Thank you for everyone who honed into the issue being first cell cannot have text starting with “ID”. cheers folks.
Still helping! March 14, 2019
Still helping! March 19, 2019