Corrupt excel file (2003)

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Hi,
I have a very small (110kb) but massively important excel document that appears to be corrupt and I am unable to open. Upon attempting to open, both via excel or explorer, I get the following message:

The document is corrupt and cannot be opened. To try and repair it, use the open and repair command in the open dialog (File menu) and select Extract Data when prompted.

I don’t seem to have this command available to me (unless I am going seriously blind), any suggestions??

The file contains minimal formula’s and no code, just important data. I have no backup…..

Thanks
Nathan

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In the first place, make sure that you make backups regularly and frequently from now on! This is essential!

See Repairing corrupted files in Excel for some recommendations from Microsoft.

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I’m not having a good week!! . I have tried manual repair and just about every other possible option that I have come accross. Manual repair says ‘unable to read file’ and will neither repair or extract data. I think I will have to put this down to a [bad] experience and manually re-create.

note to self: must make copie’s!!!!

Nathan

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There are third-party recovery tools. Most are not free but offer a limited free trial version. Several are listed in Steps to Recovering a Corrupt Excel File.

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Have you tried downloading and using Excel Viewer 2003 from the Microsoft site? It’s a bit of a long shot, but you may find you can retrieve the data into another spreadsheet

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If you have OpenOffice (freely downloadable) you might try and see if that will open it. Otherwise attempting a straight formula link from a blank workbook to cells in the closed workbook might get something back?

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Thanks for all your suggestions.. I will attempt them all this evening and report back.

I’m utterly baffled though!! I use massive workbooks all day most days with mass amounts of formula’s, code, conditional and normal formatting >> never get any problems. I have a tiny workbook with data (typed in) I can’t afford to lose, and it becomes corrupt?? NO sense!!

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That’s life – these things always happen where you least expect them and when it’s maximally inconvenient… That’s why frequent backups are so important.

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