Microsoft Office files can become corrupted and/or ungovernable in a number of different ways. The corruption can be a result of the application crash, Windows crashe, if the file is contaminated with macro virus, if the actual divisions on the disk become indecipherable, power outages etc

Even if a file is corrupted but important, it has to be restored. The file may contain some significant information. There is a possibility of recovering information stored in the corrupted excel file.

Ways to recover information from a corrupted excel file.

If the following mentioned procedures are followed correctly, then any information can be procured from corrupted files. The procedure is as under:

  • If you think the file is corrupted, then close it and then try to reopen the excel file.
  • Sometimes, even after reopening the file, it does not open. At this point, restart the computer and try to open the file again.
  • After practicing the above step, if you still cannot open the file then erase the information in temp directory located in C drive. After this, reboot it.
  • If still eluded from success, try and open excel in safe mode. Type “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\excel.exe” /s [“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\excel.exe” /s. This command will open Excel in safe mode.
  • One has to be sure that the corrupted file is free of any kind of virus. If macro heuristics scanning is On, it will not allow any viruses to enter the system.
  • Once you are sure that there is no virus in the file, try to open it as a word document. This can be done by reinstating .xls extension with the .doc extension in explorer.
  • If the above step is unsuccessful in regaining the data, then cross-check that the file should not be unrecoverable on the disk. Try to copy the data to another folder. If you are unable to copy then there is a possibility that the actual segments on the disk are corrupted.
  • Make an attempt to recover any file from the damaged disk.
  • Try and open or copy this file in a recent version of Excel or in any other spreadsheet application. These versions increase the probability of recovering the data.
  • If all the above steps are followed and still no respite is available then try and use a commercial application enabled to recover the corrupted files.

One more method

Another way using which the file can be recovered is by renaming the file as .txt, as a substitute of.xls extension. This will open the file in WordPad. Turn on word wrapping. You will now be able to see your entire data. Delete the unnecessary data. Reopen the file in the oldest version of a spreadsheet. However, please note that there are slim chances that you will be able to recover your data.