"File format not valid" indicate corruption?

Posted by Dwight on August 15, 2001 8:14 AM

An excel 97 file which has been in use for several months suddenly won't open; attempting to open displays error message: "file format not valid". Appears to still have xls extension. Also seems to have mysteriously balooned in size from about 169k to 600k+. I guess it's corrupted and I can probably get network gurus to obtain earlier version but that will take several days. Anybody have an idea on whether I can open & salvage this file?
Thanks.

Posted by neo on August 15, 2001 8:26 AM

sounds corrupted to me. best get on the phone with the net guys... or check out mr.excel's corruption recovery options. i haven't tried them, but it sounds like what you need...

neo

Posted by Dwight on August 15, 2001 8:34 AM

More information: file was opened in Word

More info:
I have determined that a user inadvertently opened the file in Word. Now the file can only be opened in Word. All the information is still there, but not in a useful form. Don't see any option to "save as Excel file". I still need help on getting this back to original form & preventing it from happening again (I have 50 users for similar spreadsheets and lots of them are not particularly computer savvy). Any way to code the files so they can't be opened in Word?

Posted by neo on August 15, 2001 8:51 AM

Re: More information: file was opened in Word

that indeed is more information... have you tried import the file into excel from word rather than trying to save it in excel format?

neo