1 - Using "Open and repair"
Microsoft Excel has a
built-in repair tool
for corrupted files. To access it, go to File and Open. A menu will pop
up in which you'll have to select the file you want to fix and then
choose
"Open and repair" from the dropdown menu. This
will open a dialogue box in which you can pick between the repair option
(which will recover as much information as possible) and the extract
option (that will copy values and formulas). The two alternatives
combined should work fine to save your work.
2 - Saving the file to a different format
If you can open the file but you can't modify it or save the changes, you should use this method. You'll have to
save the file to a different format (such as
SYLK or
HTML) via the
"Save as"
menu. Once you've done this, you'll have to open the recently saved
file and then save it once again (but this time, you'll have to choose
the Excel Workbook as the format). By doing this, you'll be creating a
fresh new file with all the data from the corrupted file.
3 - Opening the file in Microsoft Word
This option is only available for the people that have the
Microsoft Excel converter installed on their PC (it can be downloaded from the
Microsoft website). You simply have to
open the corrupted Excel file with Word. However, you should know that
this method only works for retrieving data (all the structures from the sheet will be gone, such as formulas and macros).
4 - Altering the Calculation option
If your file isn't opening at all you can try to
adjust the calculation option. Simply open Excel in a blank workbook, go to the
"Tools" menu and look for
"Options". There you'll find the
"Calculation" tab in which you'll have to look for the "
Calculation" section and set it to
"Manual". Click OK and then try to open the corrupted file once again.
5 - Linking the corrupted file
In this method, you'll have to
link one cell of a blank worksheet to the corrupted workbook. Be sure to
create the new worksheet in the same location as the corrupted file. Once you've done this go to the blank worksheet and enter the following in the A1 cell:
<Filename>!A1.
This will copy the data from the A1 cell of the corrupted file to the
new sheet. In case it works, simply click "Edit" on the cell and select an area like the one covers the cell that contain data in the damaged file, and then click
Paste. Then (and with the cells still selected) click
Copy on the
Edit menu.
