Please help to recover file, file format is not valid

[rowrow]

Hi,

My computer recently crashed (auto shut down). Usually when this happens, when I power up and open excel the next time, there is an option to recover unsaved file during sudden shut down.

But for this latest crash, there is no option for me to recover unsaved file, and it displays a popup box when I double click to open the xls file

The popup box shows:
"myfile.xls:: file format is not valid." with a "ok" button.

All my previous work is missing too. The whole file becomes empty like a new workbook.

Is there any way I could recover the file?

Usually where are the recover unsaved files stored? and where are the auto saved stored?

Thanks for all help

(unfortunately, my last backup was done one month ago and some errors in the harddisk stopped the backup schedule from going smoothly.)

[dominicb]

Good afternoon rowrow

Hmmmmm, I'd say it doesn't look too good.
You may have to revert to your backup. If you don't have one (which I'm sure you will) you might like to have a look at this post, whcih gives tips on this very situation. If one of them does work for you, please post back and let us know.

http://www.excelforum.com/tips-and-t...pted-file.html

Good luck.

HTH

DominicB

[Goerge Martin]

Well, it is a common case of corruption and you need not to worry as it can be fixed easily. As like any other file format on Mac Excel files can also get damaged or inaccessible due to several possible reasons. But no matter whatever may be the reason behind emergence of such critical issue is, there are certain way which can be used to repair and recover your corrupted excel documents easily. Backup is probably the most efficient among them. In lack of backup copy you can also rely on a sophisticated third party tool in order to get your precious files back.

To get more information visit: http://www.macfixz.com/how-to-recove...data-recovered

[Sue_cici]

You still have the .xls file, but it seems to be corrupt. You should make a backup of the file first before taking any data recovery actions on it.

When an Excel file is corrupted, then you can try several methods to recover it:

1.(Free Method) First of all, you can try to repair the file manually in Excel, as follows:

(1) On the File menu, click Open.
(2) In the Open dialog box, select the file you want to open, and click the arrow next to the Open button.
(3) Click Open and Repair, and then choose which method you want to use to recover your workbook.

You may find more information about this at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...001034656.aspx (for Excel 2003)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...017.aspx?CTT=1 (for Excel 2007)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...840.aspx?CTT=1 (for Excel 2010)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...554.aspx?CTT=1 (for Excel 2013)

2.(Free Method) If method 1 fails, there are still several methods to recover your Excel file manually with Excel, including writing a small VBA macro, as below

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...#_Toc337637262

3.(Free Method) Third, there are also free tools from third-parties that can open and read Microsoft Excel files, for example,

3.1 OpenOffice at http://www.openoffice.org. This is a very famous open source project that is designed to support Office file formats, including Excel files. The software can run under Windows.

3.2 LibreOffice at http://www.LibreOffice.org. Another free office suite.

3.3 KingSoft Spreadsheets at http://www.kingsoftstore.com/office/free-excel. This is a free Windows tool that can open Excel files.

3.4 Google Drive at https://drive.google.com/ also support to load Excel files.

Sometimes when Excel fails to open your file, these tools may be able to open it successfully. If that is the case, then after the Excel file is opened, you can just save it as a new file which will be error-free.

4.(Free Method) For xlsx files, they are actually a group of files compressed in Zip file format. Therefore, sometimes, if the corruption is only caused by the Zip file, then you can use Zip repair tools such as WinRAR at http://www.rarlab.com to repair the file, as follows:

4.1 Assuming the corrupt Excel file is a.xlsx, then you need to rename it to a.zip
4.2 Start WinRAR, go to "Tools > Repair Archive" to repair a.zip and generated a fixed file a_fixed.zip.
4.3 Rename a_fixed.zip back to a_fixed.xlsx
4.4 Using Excel to open a_fixed.xlsx.


There may still be some warnings when opening the fixed file in Excel, just let ignore it and Excel will try to open and repair the fixed file. If the file can be opened successfully, then you can just save the contents into another error-free file.

5.(Non-Free Method) If all above methods do not work, then you may try third-party tools such as DataNumen Excel Repair at

http://www.datanumen.com/excel-repair/recovery.htm

It supports both .xls and .xlsx format. I have used it to recover some Excel files successfully. It provides a free demo version so that you can try to see if the data you want can be recovered or not.

Good luck!