Excel recovery solutions when Workbook is Damaged

Excel is one of the most commonly used spreadsheet application, owing to its ease of use and the a large number of features, including arithmetic operations, graphing tools, pivot tables, and more. Despite extending all these features, it has not been able to escape a few drawbacks and bugs. Amongst many, one is damage to workbooks, due to power surge, human error, virus attack, abrupt shutdown of the system, file becoming too large, incompatible upgradation, application malfunction, network issues, improper coding etc. In such case, one may try to repair Excel file, manually or using Excel file repair tools.


If one fine day, a person opens an Excel file to make changes in it, and finds that is is damaged, he/she is in a state of shock. When that initial stage of shock passes, it is only then that a person can think rationally. And, then it is recommended to think of that backup, which was created when work had just been completed in that file. But what to do if the backup doesn't work, or worse you forgot to created a backup.


In case a file is damaged, it may either not open, or may not show data in correct form (may be garbled text) after opening. To resolve this problem, and extract your data, follow the directions given underneath:


If the file doesn't open: Try to open your workbook with the 'Open and Repair' feature. When we select Open from the File menu of Excel application, then the dialog box which opens allows you to select the file which has to be opened, after which you need to click on the small arrow on the right side of the 'Open' button. Thereafter, you should select 'Open and Repair'. Following this, you need to click on 'Repair' when prompted.


If the file opens:

You may be able to filter it, by saving it as HTML Web Page, or XML Spreadsheet format. After this, you should close the file, and then reopen, and save it as Microsoft Excel Workbook. You may not be able to save everything, but most of the things.


If neither works, then you need to opt for a third-party Excel file repair tool. These tools apply complex algorithms to repair Excel file and extract maximum data from it.

How to overcome 'The workbook may be in an unsupported file format...' Excel 2007 error

Microsoft Excel 2007 comes equipped with new results-oriented user interface and has the capacity to accommodate 1 million rows and 16, 000 columns. Besides advantages like rich data visualization, PivotTable views, Excel 2007 lets you share a spreadsheet with the introduction of a new technology called Excel services. By sharing a spreadsheet using Excel 2007 and Excel Services (a feature of MS Office SharePoint Server), you can navigate, sort, filter, input parameters, and interact with the PivotTable views directly on the Web browser. However, at times, you might not be able to load a spreadsheet, published to Excel Services, and receive an error message. This situation hints towards possible corruption in an Excel sheet. To overcome such issues, it becomes essential for you to use the backup copy of the spreadsheet. And, if there is no backup available, then you must opt for a professional Excel repair software.

Consider a scenario, wherein, you have a workbook which is created in Microsoft Excel 2007 (.xlsx). You publish this workbook to Excel services and when you use a Web broswer to try to view the workbook, it doesn't load. And, you receive the following error message:

Unable to Load Workbook
The workbook that you selected cannot be opened.
The workbook may be in an unsupported file format, or it may be corrupt.
Would you like to try and open this file in Excel?

Cause

The above error message can be encountered in the following conditions:

• The issue occurs if one or more cells of your workbook contains a space character in front of the caret (^) operator in a formula
• Or if your workbook is damaged or corrupt (as stated in the above error message)

Resolution

To overcome the problem, you can try the following Excel file repair steps:

• Remove the space character that is in the front of the caret operator (^) in the formula
• Or save the workbook in non-XML binary format (.xlsb), and then publish it to the server
• If the above-mentioned steps fail to address the problem, then you must consider using a third-party Excel repair software.

How to troubleshoot 'This file is not a recognizable format' Excel error

Microsoft Excel, a popular spreadsheet application, has become an integral part of every organization, small, medium or large. This application is extensively used for executing quick calculations, maintaining financial data or records in lists and tables. Corruption is quite common in sophisticated Excel files. The many reasons behind corruption include abrupt system shutdown, virus infection, human error factor, application malfunction etc. Due to corruption data stored in an Excel file becomes inaccessible, making you completely dependent on a valid backup copy. However, if you do not have a backup, you can try repairing a corrupt Excel file on your own by employing various Excel file repair strategies provided by Microsoft.

Consider a scenario, wherein, you create a workbook containing information regarding your team members' salary details in Excel 2007. You try to open the Excel sheet in 2003 version on your office computer, and instead receive the following error message:

"This file is not a recognizable format."

As a result of the above error message, you are unable to access the content of your Excel workbook since it is virtually unreadable.

Cause

The above error message and strange behavior exhibited by the Excel file in question suggest it is a case of corruption. The Excel file is corrupt and its content should be recovered using the strategies provided in the next section of this article. (Resolution)

Resolution

To fix the above error and corruption issue, you must execute the following Excel repair steps:

• Set the recalculation option in Excel to manual

1.Open Excel, open a blank workbook
2.Go to Tools menu, click Options
3.Click the Calculation tab
4.In the Calculation section, click Manual and then click OK
5.On the File menu, click Open and try to open the file

• Use external references to link to the corrupt file

1.Go to File menu, click Open, browse to the folder which contains the damaged file, click Cancel
2.Click New on the File menu, and click OK
3.Type=FileName!A1 in cell A1 of the new workbook (File name refers to the name of the damaged workbook). If the Select Sheet dialog box appears, select the appropriate sheet and click OK
4.Select cell A1, on the Edit menu, click Edit. Then, select an area which is approximately the same size as the range of the cells which contain data in the damaged workbook, and then click Paste on the Edit menu
5.With the range of the cells selected, click Copy on the Edit menu
6.On the Edit menu, click Paste Special, select Values, and click OK. By doing this, you remove the links to the damaged file leaving only the file data

If the above-mentioned steps do not come to your rescue in recovering data from a corrupt Excel file, then grab a third-party Excel repair software.

Excel Workbook Corruption - Prevention and Recovery

With the ever growing importance of Excel application, chances of Worksheet corruption have also increased manifolds. And people who have been hit by this problem already know what it is like to be in such a situation. Mostly, people today take measures to prevent damage to their files, apart from maintaining a backup of their all important data. But what about those who have either not taken backup, or find that their backup is either not updated, or not working? Don't fret! It is possible to recover files, retrieve your data, and if regular methods do not work, then use third-party Excel repair software.

Let us know more about preventing Excel Workbook loss, before delving into its recovery.
Despite being an efficient tool, Excel is prone to failure and data loss. However, we can follow simple strategies to prevent Excel data loss. Read on to know them:

• Excel features AutoRecover that saves a copy of file at user specified location after fixed interval of time.
• Another way that is not known to many users of Excel data file is that they can enable 'Always Create Backup' option of 'Save As' dialog box, by clicking 'General Options' on the 'Tools' menu. This creates a backup with information that was saved before you last exited the file. You can also make changes to the template for default startup.
• Take good care of your hard disk because if area where file is stored becomes bad, the file will become corrupt. Perform disk maintenance by running Scan Disk to examine
• file structure of disk, once a week
• surface scan of the media, once a month
• Regularly run anti-virus scan.
• Make sure you exit Windows systematically, even if you want to shut down, or restart your system.
• Keep sources of electromagnetic radiation away from your storage media.
• Prevent dust from building upon and around your storage media.
• And most importantly, maintain a remote backup, either online, or on network.

However, if you have encountered this grave Workbook data loss situation, and have already tried various repair methods, followed by data retrieval methods, then a third-party Repair excel software is a safe bet for you!