Cant open xls files HELP!!

[TBK1]

Brand New here and need help BAD.

Ill try to keep it short, I am not an expert EXCEl user.

had a xls file of 1800 person membership list and lost it!

had someone re-enter the entire data base and now have it on disk but cant open it.

when i try it says "file format is not valid"

this is what happened when i tried to save and reopen the original one that i lost!

using xp pro and ms office 4.3


Please help!!

 

[Andrew Poulsom]

As a start this might work.

Assume your file is called MyFile and is located in C:MyDocs. Assume also that your data is on Sheet1 in the file.

Open a new workbook and in cell A1 type:

='C:MyDocs[MyFile]Sheet1'!A1

If you're lucky this formula will return the value in cell A1 of the corrupted file.

Copy the formula down and across to recover as much as you can, then convert the formulas to values and save the new workbook.

Note this only recovers values, not formulas.

 

[TBK1]

i have the new files on disk that are not corrupted but i cant open them on my comp.

they say they are xls files but when trying to open they say invalid format

 

[Andrew Poulsom]

If you can't open them they are corrupted aren't they?

 

[MarkHenri]

If you send me the file, I'll try opening it with Office XP. It's error recovery is really good. I'd also like to look at it for evidence of viruses.

The typical reason for file corruption that we see here at the MS XL Support Group is either virus corruption, opening the a: drive door before Excel is finished writing to it, a dropped network connection (same basic reason as the a: drive scenario) and a system crash while editing. Did one of these happen to you?

BTW, what anti-virus software are you using?

 

[TBK1]

ok folks, i got it, it appears that the file was created in a newer version than i have. (office 2000) (versus office professional) had the person save as version 4.0 and i got it to come up and work. Thanks all