Excel file showing ! and has now work saved from the last 3 months?

[hugh1994]

Hello all,

I am trying to help a family friend (over the internet) with this problem. They had an excel file saved on their desktop. She had the document opened and then needed to shutdown her computer. When she turned the machine back on the document showed an exclamation mark and had no work saved in it from the past ~ 3 months.

Any ideas?

Thank you.

(Edit: sorry for spelling mistake in title

[pjwhitfield]

What version of Excel is it? and does the file have Macros in?

[hugh1994]

It is Excel 2013 (on win8 machine). I believe it has no macros, just straight data.

[adhawan06]

Try following steps to recover (10% chances only) your file.


Open any Excel workbook then go to Excel Option Tools-->Option (ALT + T + O)-->Save-->Auto Recover file location: Copy the path is given in Auto Recover file location and now open Window Explorer (Window + E Key). Type the address in the window explorer path or follow the path and it will take to to the folder where temp file saved automatically. There will be many folders so try to locate the file there.


Else try below step.

Go to the folder where the file was saved and do right click. Go to Property-->Previous Version. There will be multi data back up taken by window automatically . Try to open the right folder (your friend must be remember when was the last time when that file was saved properly) and see if your friend can locate the file.


Hope your friend recover the file.


Cheers!!!

Anil Dhawan