Repairing A Damaged Or Corrupt Excel File
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011We’ve all been there: you’ll be working on a file in Excel but something will go wrong and it will become damaged or corrupt. You might think there’s nothing you can do, but there are several options when it comes to attempting to repair the data. They split into three categories. When you reopen the file, Excel will first try to repair the file itself. The second step is to try and extract all the formulae, leaving you with raw data. Then there are some manual options to try.
Firstly, there are some simple options to try that are likely to work on most files. The first thing to do is to just reopen the file, then if it still doesn’t work, restart the computer before trying again with Excel. Another tactic is to open the file using Open Office before saving it as another name. Then try Excel again. You can also scan the file for viruses to make sure there’s nothing else wrong with it and then open Excel in safe mode before trying the file.
Once you have exhausted the above options, you can still try some other things. First, you should try and copy the file to another hard disk so you’ll have a backup copy, which is always useful. Then try and open the file in Excel. If it opens, use the Revert to Saved Document command, which will hopefully bring up the last saved version of the file. If you then save this in SYLK format and then HTML format, this should hopefully repair your data.
If, however, Excel won’t open your file then your next step is to try some alternative manual options. Opening the file in either MS Word or WordPad can help. Do this by changing the .xls in the file name to .doc so it will open in Word. This should then let you recover your data by opening the file in Excel viewer. You can also use a macro to extract the data if the file’s corrupted. You should at least be able to cover the data, if not the formulae.
If none of the above options work or you are unsure about trying to repair a corrupt file by yourself, then there is also third party software available for purchase that should be able to help you with it. Failing that, there are computing companies that specialize in recovery services and repairing damaged files, so this could be a good option to use if you are out of other choices and really need to get access to your file. Making a backup copy can help prevent it happening again.
Further Reading : Excel Training