Opening Corrupt Excel files

Sometimes one gets unlucky and a file is corrupted. This may result in the file not opening at all or in error messages during opening.

Here are some options to try and open a corrupt file or retrieve information out of it.

Set calculation to manual( Open Excel, Choose Tools, Options from the menu, click the Calculation tab and choose Manual. Hit OK. Now try to open the file.
Open the file, but disable macros (assuming you've set macro security to medium: Tools, Macro, security)
As soon as you've clicked the disable macros button, press control-pageup or control-pagedown, thus changing sheets. Sometimes the corruption is inside a chart on a specific sheet, changing the sheet to another may prevent a crash, enabling you to copy the other sheets.

If that does not work, try creating a link to the file in an empty cell in a fresh workbook. Type this formula (adapt path, filename and sheetname):

='c:\my documents\[MyFileName.xls]Sheet1'!A1

and copy right and down. This at may get you the worksheets values.

if you don't know the sheet names, omit it by entering this:

='C:\PathToFile\[MyFileName.xls]'!A1

and press enter. If XL (2000) is able to extract them, it will prompt you for a sheet name.

Sometimes the Excel viewer, Word or even Internet explorer (v5) enables you to open the file and copy information out of it.

If the file is not protected, maybe you can open it with OpenOffice (www.Openoffice.org).

Also, Excel XP and 2003 can sometimes repair XL files with trouble. Simply choose File, open, select the problem file and instead of simply hitting the "Open" button, click to the right of it on its tiny down arrow to expose more options (see screenshot below)

Finally, sometimes a corrupt file that still can be opened, can be cured using this method (Excel 2000 or up):

Open the file
Save-as filetype Webpage
Close the file
Open the html file
Save-as normal Excel workbook.

Comments

Showing last 8 comments of 109 in total (Show All Comments):

Comment by: Alex (10/31/2011 12:15:58 AM)

Thanks for this page, Jan.
Just helped out my colleague to recover a corrupted xlsx file by opening it in OpenOffice.
Stay cool.

Comment by: Djapex (12/16/2011 2:48:49 PM)

I just want to thanks on advice to try open corrupt excel file with OpenОffice. It works :-)

Comment by: shohag (12/26/2011 1:16:55 AM)

When i click on opened excel file then automatically select option is enabled. At that time no other option is working. How can i solve it? please reply...

Comment by: Jan Karel Pieterse (12/29/2011 7:11:51 AM)

Hi Shohag,

I am sorry, I don't understand your problem, could you try to explain a bit more?

Comment by: arslan (12/29/2011 11:59:26 PM)

when im open my excel 2007 file problem shown that could not be found.check the spelling of the file name and verify that the file location is correct.

if you are trying to open the file from your list of most recently used files,make sure that the file has not been renamed,moved or deleted.

Comment by: Jan Karel Pieterse (12/30/2011 12:28:51 PM)

Hi Arslan,

Have a look at this page:

http://www.jkp-ads.com/articles/startupproblems.asp

Comment by: JEEVA (1/14/2012 12:48:20 AM)

WHERE IS TOOL BAR IN EXCEL? HOW TO OPEN CORRUPTED FILE?

Comment by: Jan Karel Pieterse (1/15/2012 11:13:35 AM)

HI JEEVA,

What Excel version are you using?

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