We have this error: Unable to read the sprea...

[Tom_Graham]

We have this error:

Unable to read the spreadsheet for ‘PIDStaffView-80261:1.000713:LWD Data’ due to spreadsheet reader error: ‘’, hexadecimal value 0x03, is an invalid character. Line 10, position 725951.MORE INFO

The more info link gives info that says "Likely Cause You may have a spreadsheet that causes AppSheet to have an internal error. Resolution Steps Please contact our support with a detail description at ‘support@appsheet.com’. "

any ideas on how to resolve this ourselves?

[pravse]

Hi Tom, I’m assuming this is a Google Sheet.

During the authoring/editor phase, AppSheet asks Google to export a sheet into Excel format, reads the Excel format and extracts information from it. The error could be because Google doesn’t export correctly to Excel, or it could be because AppSheet cannot read a valid Excel file generated. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it is usually the former.

Could you test one thing for us please:

via Google Sheets, try to export it to an Excel file and see if it produces a valid Excel file. If it doesn’t it may be pretty easy for you to figure out what is causing the export error and remove that from your sheet.

[Tom_Graham]

Thanks Praveen. Yes, its a Google Sheet.

• I downloaded as excel document - when opening, it gives this pop up first

[Tom_Graham]

-------------- Just added a new column to the sheet with the issue, and the same error occurred. That is likely the exact same thing that triggered the issue last time. Seems we may be exceeding some limit for the number of fields in an app?

[Tom_Graham]

this morning App loaded with the same issue as before.

[Tom_Graham]

I reverted to an older version which cleared the issue (I didn’t note which one I reverted back to, but it was one a couple of versions old)

I now note app is on below version and working fine: 1.000720

To update tomorrow to confirm if issue returns.

[Tom_Graham]

then:

[Tom_Graham]

then the data in one of the sheets does not load in the excel document.

[Tom_Graham]

if there is some offending character in the spreadsheet data, is there any clue for where to start looking?

[Tom_Graham]

@praveen Any tips for how we can resolve this?

• if I try deleting the Table and add it again,

will it keep the field settings we had?

• or should I try going back to previous version?

We urgently need to get this resolved. Staff currently cannot use the app. And it just so happened someone did use it last night, causing error in a sheet, which ended up removing products from displaying in categories on our website for number of hours…

Happy to pay for help if its available. I am getting developers to look at the spreadsheet, but so far we cannot find anything unusual. The excel issue appears to just because of the Google sheet formula and links to images.

[Tom_Graham]

UPDATE info: - I restored version 1.000711

[Tom_Graham]

• opened and is working fine

• I checked the “spreadsheet formula” field for the 2 columns that appsheet had added a formula value to last night, and in this version both of the “spreadsheet formula” field are blank.

We think those fields have been blank for a few weeks, but would have had the value that was entered at some stage.

So it is like the error-onus version we had the problem with, was pulling the “spreadsheet formula” field from a much older version.

[Tom_Graham]

fyi - we changed the field from being a vlookup in every cell, to being an arrayformula vlookup sitting in row 2.

when we do this, we note that we have to manually go into appsheet and remove the “spreadsheet formula” value, as it won’t clear automatically.