Excel cannot open my file

[craigu111]

Hi!
I am hoping for help to open a very important Excel spreadsheet. It was fine up until a few days ago and now, I don't know what happened.

I am using Excel 2007.

This is the message when I attempt to open the file:

"Excel cannot open the file 'SHOP_ACCOUNTING.xlsx' because the file format or file extension is not valid. Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file."

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is a vital spreadsheet for my business. Also. I guess I should put it out there that I'm not very computer savvy so it's ok to explain it to me like a child. Haha!

Thanks in advance,
Craig

[Special-K]

.xlsx IS a valid file extension, so from the error I assume the file format is invalid, ie the file is corrupt.
Go to your backup.

[craigu111]

uh oh!
no back up that I know of
how did it get corrupted and...is there nothing I can do or is there a backup i'm not aware of?

Thanks!

[newdoverman]

Go to the file in question in Windows Explorer, right click it and click on Previous Versions. You should be presented with a list of files. Select the last one before the latest file (the one that doesn't open). It should open. Save it with a slightly different name but don't delete the old file with its previous versions until you are satisfied that the freshly saved file is good.

[craigu111]

Thank you for the help newdoverman.
I tried but I got a message that read..."there was a problem sending the command to the program"
I tried all 3 available previous versions with the same result.
Any ideas?

Thank you!
Craig

[newdoverman]

If you are trying to open the file by double clicking, there could be a problem with the file associations. If you are trying to open the file using File Open from within Excel, I think that the file is probably totally "hosed" and not recoverable.