Corrupt file

Hi,

One important excel file of mine is corrupt (at least i think it is). I am using excel 2003.

The file used to have several sheets and all of them have important information.

I do not know what happened, but now the file has only one sheet and the information consists of lines in characters i cannot understand, almost like Chinese. But the file loads without problems.

I've googled in search of some program that might help recover my data but with no success, so i ask if someone can help me.

Did you look here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...001034656.aspx

Thanks for your help,

Unfortunately, this file contains only personal financial information, so i haven't emailed it, that was a good tip tough.

If looked in your link xenixman, i tried saving the file in those 2 formats (SYLK, HTLM), but it didn't do any good. I didn't find the option "Revert to saved document", where is it?

I've also tried to go to the autosave folder,but the file there opens with the same gibberish of symbols.

I should have backed it up more often, the last backup is very old and obsolete, if i can find it....

Could this be a virus or some option in excel? other files are fine.I have kaspersky, and it detected the virus Heur:trojan script iframer.

Thanks a lot for your help

Did you try the other options suggested, like opening in Word or Wordpad?
You may be able to recover some of the data.

Did you try Microsoft Excel Viewer?


The "Revert to Saved Document" is usually used when you are in the sheet and something goes wrong.
You would click Open then select the name of the file that you are editing.
Doing this on a document that is already corrupted may not help.

Call your helpdesk, they may be able to restore you a copy. If not then you may be SOL.

Good luck

I've tried everything you all suggested and didn't do any good. Even in in the open offce the files opens with the same mess of symbols. Can believe this! what may have caused this to the file when all others are fine :s

Sorry to hear about your corrupt file. Maybe try one of the programs out there to maybe fix it. An example from a recent thread on this site was http://www.officerecovery.com/excel/ . If the demo works then at least you know that there might be a way forward.

Also here is a suggestion I got online. It might help you: "Apparently Excel saves temporary files to "C:\ Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp" if you have Windows 2000 or XP and probably here in Vista: "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp". You are looking for files named "~DF????.TMP" where the question marks are letters or numbers, so the files are named "~DF" and then any 4 numbers and digits, ending with the extension "TMP", although these are probably hex numbers so you might not see any letter further than "F" in the alphabet. These temporary files include installed add-ins and other files made into temporary files when you open up any Excel files, so most of the files won't contain your data. Anyway, try changing each one to extension xls or xlsx and xls if you have Excel 2007, then try opening the files."

Finally, you might try to open the file using one of the newer versions of Excel. Sometimes the errors can be fixed that way.

Good luck.

abousetta

Thanks for the tips abousetta,

Officerecovery did not detect anything wrong with the file.

I tried to open the file with office 2010, it didn't work either, the same gibberish is shown

I had no luck with the temp files, i could not find any after a computer search for *.tmp and searching the folders myself.

The file must 7 years old, could this have something to do with it? could there some option in the file that is doing this?

Thank you very much for everybody's help

Regards,
Pedro

Hi Pedro,

If you haven't opened the file for 7 years, anything could have happened over this long time period. I am no expert on the matter and so my assistanc is limited by my experience.

Sorry I don't know what to tell you or where you could look further. But I do hope that eventually you find a solution to this problem. And if you do, please share it.

Good luck.

abousetta

When you click on any cell containing data in your sheet what do you see in the formula bar?

Is it possible the cells are formatted with a font that is producing unrecognizable characters?

Have you tried opening a new workbook and linking to a cell containing data in your problem workbook?

Hi all,

The file is about 7 years old but i've been working in it monthly abousetta

Cutter, when i click on a cell it shows me in the formula bar, exactly what it shows me on the cell and only cells in column A have the characters, the rest of the columns are now clear.

The font is set in Arial, I've tried to change it but nothing happens, except the font.

I've also tried to link one of the cells to another sheet and what happens is that the gibberish characters get copied.

Thanks for trying to help.

Hi Pedro,

I'm trying to think out the box here but here goes. Try running one of the programs that looks for deleted or erased documents. Maybe an older version or temp version is still lurking on your hard drive somewhere. Also if you could use Windows Restore to go back to a couple of weeks ago when the file would still be there and working. I think you would have to delete the current file or at least put it in a new folder first so that it notices that the file is missing and trys to get you an earlier saved version. Again I'm no computer scientist and so these are all attempts at brainstorming.

Good luck.

abousetta

Hi Again,

thanks for the helmet.

i tried the system restore but no good.

I formated the disk and reinstalled XP,but i did save a copy of the file, which by the way, still has the same error.

Thanks