Repair Problem with Excel Removing All But First External SQL Query Tables

Question

We have an Excel 2007 XLSX workbook that we created for doing some business analysis from the SQL database that contains data from our MRP system. It started as a single sheet with one data connection running a SQL query. The data comes into
the spreadsheet as a table and there are some basic row and column sums being done.
After getting the first version up and running without problems, we decided to add some additional sheets to the same workbook. Since each of these additional sheets had only slight variations to the SQL query and the formatting was all to be the same, we
simply copied the first sheet and modified the data connection for each successive sheet (each copy automatically created a copy of the data connection as well). Everything seemed to be up and running properly, so we saved and closed the workbook.
A little bit later, the same workbook was re-opened and Excel reported that "Excel found unreadable content in '<file name>'. Do you want to recover the contents of this workbook? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes." If Yes
is clicked, then Excel indicates the repairs that were made. Only one was made for each sheet beyond the first and that was "Removed Part: /xl/queryTables/queryTable2.xml part. (External data range)". The result was that the data connection
was deleted from every sheet other than the first and only static data left in place.
We thought it might have actual been some corruption, so we deleted the static sheets and recreated them the same way. After saving and closing, re-opening the file resulted in the same problem. It seems that Excel is somehow saving data that it can't read
when it opens. I would think it could be something in the SQL query, but all sheets have essentially the same SQL query, so I'm not sure why the first sheet survives. As a result, I think it must be something that it does in copying the sheet and the corresponding
data connections, but I'm not sure.
I think this might be some kind of bug, but would like to know if anyone else has encountered a similar problem and found a solution. A few internet searches didn't give me much to check out.
Thanks in advance,
indyvql

Answer 1

KR,
Thanks for your response. I don't think it applies in this case since the file was created brand new in Excel 2007 and used in the same. There was no 3rd-party program involved. I'm also not migrating from 2003 to 2010 as the stellarinfo.com article
suggests. Some of the other suggestions there also don't make any difference as all the data links are lost on opening the worksheet, so copying and pasting doesn't do any good.
I tried to create a simple example by creating a new workbook with a sheet with a very simple SQL query ("select * from X where a > b"), but in that example it worked fine. I'm guessing there is something key about the much more complex SQL query
in my original file with the problem, but I'm not sure why it would only affect copies of the data connection and not the original data connection itself.
Thanks,
indyvql