Excel quits abruptly post editing header information? Here are repair tips

Excel allows you to insert descriptive text such as dates, titles and page numbers through 'header and footer' option. You can add some notes or references inside an Excel workbook by using headers and footers. This option helps you in providing additional information to a reader which cannot be accommodated in the original text or data area. However, you might run into problems while updating or editing an Excel workbook's header and footer information. Events like abrupt exit from the application might end up corrupting the workbook in question. In such scenarios, the best solution lies in replacing the affected workbook with an updated backup copy. However, if no such alternate solution exists, then the best way to recover your corrupt Excel workbook is using a third-party Excel repair software.

Consider a scenario, wherein, you have an Excel 2003 spreadsheet containing vital information about the performance of your team members in a particular year. You try to edit the information in the header, but fail to do so as the Excel file crashes unexpectedly. When you make an attempt to open it again, it doesn't open. All of the information stored in the affected Excel file goes inaccessible, leaving you in a miserable and helpless condition.

Cause

The Excel workbook might have gotten corrupt due to unexpected crash it suffered while you tried to edit header information. Corruption could also occur if you created an Excel sheet in an earlier version and imported it into a later version of Excel.

Resolution

Workbook corruption is a serious problem for any user who loses access to the important information stored in it. You can derive the information from a clean and updated backup, but in case you do not have a valid copy available to perform Excel Recovery things can go really tough to handle.

Nevertheless, you have a good chance of recovering data from a corrupt Excel file provided you select and download an efficient Excel repair application. Though, you might find a number of such applications on the Internet, it is not advisable to trust just any. Proper research must be done before considering an application for the repair and recovery process. After all, you do not want to lose the information forever.

How to fix 'Workbook that you selected cannot be opened' error

Excel services work with Excel 2007 and allows you to share, load, calculate Excel workbooks on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 portals and dashboards. You can share an entire Workbook or just few parts of it like charts, tables etc. By using a Web browser, end users can view and interact with the workbooks. However, at times, when you publish a workbook to Excel Services and try to load it in a browser, you might run into an error message. Such situations erupt when you try to load a corrupt workbook. You can use a healthy backup copy of the Excel file and upload it again to the server. However, if you cannot access a backup copy or if it is not an updated one, then you must consider using an Excel repair software.

Consider a scenario, wherein, you have created an Excel 2007 spreadsheet containing information about the sales revenue of your company. You have an online meeting with your colleagues where you have to discuss the figures and stats given in the Excel sheet. You save the file in .xlsx format and publish it to Excel Services. When you use a Web browser to load the particular Excel workbook, Excel Services doesn't load it. Additionally, 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 error message can be received in the following situations:

• If the workbook contains a formula which has a space character in front of the (^) caret operator.
• Or if the workbook in question is corrupt or damaged

Resolution

The following Repair excel file steps must be considered to resolve the problem:

• You must do away with the space character which is placed in front of the caret operator in the formula
• You can also save the affected workbook in non-XML binary format (.xlsb) and then try to republish it to Excel Services
• If the problem doesn't get resolved, then it is for sure that the workbook is corrupt. You must employ a third-party Excel repair application and fix the errors in an easy way.

How to address workbook corruption in Excel 2007

Corruption of Excel workbooks is not a new phenomenon. Irrespective of the version of Excel, a workbook is quite prone to getting damaged in many instances including improper shutdown of application, power fluctuations or abrupt system shutdown. Despite incorporating advanced features, Excel 2007 can annoy users with corruption problems. What to be done? If you have an Excel 2007 workbook and you are encountering problems while opening it, then it is quite evident that it is corrupt. In such scenarios, you can obviously turn up to a backup copy provided if it is updated and in a clean state. However, if you cannot bank upon a backup copy, do not think you have lost valuable data forever. Many Excel repair tools have been launched lately which promise to repair damaged or corrupt Excel files without modifying the original data.

Think of a situation, wherein, you have an Excel 2007 worksheet containing contact and personal information of your team members. One fine day, when you try and open it, you might not be able to access its contents. In addition to this, you might receive the following error message:

"Excel found unreadable content in Book_Name. Do you want to recover the contents of this workbook."

After clicking Yes to the error message, you receive the following error message report:

Removed Records: PivotTable report from /xl/pivotCache/pivotCacheDefinition1.xml part (PivotTable cache

Cause

The above Excel error could erupt in the following conditions:

• Presence of a PivotTable in the workbook which uses key performance indicators (KPIs)
• If the KPIs are made in the Analysis Services Business Intelligence Development Studio
• If one or more KPIs have an expression in the Current Time Member property
• Lastly, the error might also surface if the Excel 2007 workbook is corrupt

Resolution

Try the following workarounds which would assist you in executing Excel file repair:

• The issue can be resolved if you take out expressions from all Current Time Member properties
Being an optional property, it can be done away with to get rid off the error message.
• If the above solution doesn't really work, then you must have to employ effective Excel recovery strategies to fix corruption