Instead of going to sleep in the park and having a walk in the park after lunch, you spent your whole Sunday putting your statistical data in neat tables, you wrote formulas and drew beautiful graphics. You even went so far as to choose beautiful fonts. You have taken pains, because tomorrow is a very important day. In the evening, with a smile of satisfaction, you admire the work accomplished, dreaming of this promotion which is comingafter such a report. It’s in your pocket, and you save the file on a USB key.
The next morning at the office, drinking your coffee and already enjoying your future triumph, you try to open the file. And there is disaster. You have an error message saying that your excel file is corrupt, damaged or that the file format is not valid.
Example of an error message when opening your Excel file
With trembling hands, you try again and again to open Excel. In vain,you scream like a wounded animal, your eyes are veiled, you are nauseated. The last thing you remember is the sound of the broken cup, the screams of your panicked colleagues, the crying of a woman and the arms of the supply manager.
Now let’s talk seriously
Any active user of Excel has probably already been confronted with the problem of “broken down” workbooks at the wrong time (whether it is an .xls or .xlsx file, it doesn’t matter) Best, of course, is not to let things go that far. It is very simple to prevent this: FileSave asin the Browse menu, select the folder where you will save your file software (button next to Save at the bottom right of the window)in the Options menu general check the Create backup copy box. There it’s done. You are great. Now, even if your main filing cabinet is damaged, you will still have a copy and the problem will not arise again.
Excel configuration for automatic backup of an Excel document
But what if the file is already damaged, you don’t have a copy, but absolutely need to recover the content? If your workbook contains a large amount of data, with a lot of diagrams and images, but its “weight” does not exceed a few kilobytes, there is a good chance that the file cannot be recovered. However, if the size corresponds to the content of the file, you can recover it.
Recovery Using Ms Excel
First, try to repair the file using the tools built into MS Excel. In theory, upon detecting an error in a damaged workbook, the intelligent software automatically starts the file recovery mode. However, this does not happen every time and you must therefore activate the recovery procedure manually.
Step 1:In Excel, click on: FileOpen in the Open dialog box
Step 2: Select the damaged workbook
Step 3: Click on the arrow next to it
Step 4: Open button from the drop-down menu
Step 5: select Open and Repair.
If you are unable to repair Excel file using manual methods, then try alternative Excel file repair software to fix errors. According to MVPs and experts, you can download free demo of third party solution like Stellar Repair for Excel.
