I had the same problem with cif files from Kunz et al., 1991. But I modified the cif file a bit: remove the “a” in the name of elements and the modified cif file should work with cif2cell. I hope this trick will help you.
The warning looks like this:
***Warning: Si2a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: Si3a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: Si4a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O1a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O2a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O3a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O4a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O5a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O6a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O7a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O8a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O9a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O10a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O11a is not a chemical element.
***Warning: O12a is not a chemical element.
***Warning : Site occupancies not found, assuming all occupancies = 1.
***Error: Chemical composition of the generated cell differs from that given
by _chemical_formula_sum. Use –force to generate a cell anyway.