Need to recover file after Excel crash

[aacross]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I have a large-ish spreadsheet (2.3mb), one of several linked spreadsheets that I have been working on. Three times today Excel has crashed. The first two times, it allowed me to create a recovery file (XLSB). The third time, after I had made regular saves of the spreadsheet to avoid all the complicated work to re-work the recovery files, it did not offer a recovery, presumably because I had saved it seconds before it crashed again. However, my main file is now totally unreadable by Excel. It refuses to open, giving a message 'Excel cannot open this file - The file might have been damaged or modified from its original format.' I have the latest patches, have tried deleting the Office 2008 directory in the Preferences folder, and also tried renaming the file to xls and xlsb with no joy (this sometimes works, particularly xls).

The stupid thing is, Apple Numbers will open it (albeit with fixed tables as it does not support Pivot Tables), as will Apple Quick View!

Any ideas? I lost two hours work in the last crash, so I am a little reluctant to do it all again, as I have made little progress today!

Also, another related question: What is the simplest way to keep external workbook references intact? Because I have numerous linked workbooks, if I rename them, the linked tables remain connected to the old names. This is one of the problems with recovery files. The best I can think of is to keep a sheet with links to the external workbooks that I can refer to in cells, though I have not tried this.

Many thanks in advance!

Andrew

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Andrew:

Only bad news, I am afraid.

Excel crashed because there is something in the file that it doesn't
understand.

Apple Numbers will open it because it is not trying to read that bit,
because it does not have the function described. Any application reads an
XML file by parsing it, and reading in only the parts it understands.

Whatever you have been doing in that file, or the way you are doing it, is
beyond the capability of Excel 2008. I don't know what it is that you are
doing, but there's "something" about it that Excel doesn't like. Sorry...

Note that the extension on a file name tells the computer what kind of data
the file contains. "Re-naming" a file is a really bad idea, because now you
are telling the application the file contains a data type that it doesn't:
you will normally make a bad situation worse by doing that. If it was going
to open, it would open on File>Open with the correct extension on the file.

To quickly change links,

1) Goto Edit | Links
2) Then change source
3) In the file selection select the current workbook.

Hope this helps

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
I have a large-ish spreadsheet (2.3mb), one of several linked spreadsheets
that I have been working on. Three times today Excel has crashed. The first
two times, it allowed me to create a recovery file (XLSB). The third time,
after I had made regular saves of the spreadsheet to avoid all the complicated
work to re-work the recovery files, it did not offer a recovery, presumably
because I had saved it seconds before it crashed again. However, my main file
is now totally unreadable by Excel. It refuses to open, giving a message
'Excel cannot open this file - The file might have been damaged or modified
from its original format.' I have the latest patches, have tried deleting the
Office 2008 directory in the Preferences folder, and also tried renaming the
file to xls and xlsb with no joy (this sometimes works, particularly xls).

The stupid thing is, Apple Numbers will open it (albeit with fixed tables as
it does not support Pivot Tables), as will Apple Quick View!

Any ideas? I lost two hours work in the last crash, so I am a little
reluctant to do it all again, as I have made little progress today!

Also, another related question: What is the simplest way to keep external
workbook references intact? Because I have numerous linked workbooks, if I
rename them, the linked tables remain connected to the old names. This is one
of the problems with recovery files. The best I can think of is to keep a
sheet with links to the external workbooks that I can refer to in cells,
though I have not tried this.

Many thanks in advance!

Andrew

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[aacross]

Thanks John. I managed to recover the file with OpenOffice. The only bits I had to re-work were parts I had not worked on for a while (one of several pivot tables), which was surprising. Otherwise, everything else was fine. All the same data and functions etc. as before, so I am saving several copies now to be sure!

I know about Links, but as there were a number of links, I was trying to short cut this.

Thanks again.

Andrew

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Andrew:

Yeah, I know that managing links are a PITA.

Hopefully the Link Editor will be a lot better in the next version of Excel.

Even if it isn't, VBA will be back, which means you can quickly run up a
little routine to fix 'em all.

Cheers

Thanks John. I managed to recover the file with OpenOffice. The only bits I
had to re-work were parts I had not worked on for a while (one of several
pivot tables), which was surprising. Otherwise, everything else was fine.
All the same data and functions etc. as before, so I am saving several copies
now to be sure!

I know about Links, but as there were a number of links, I was trying to short
cut this.

Thanks again.

Andrew

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

 

[mariaellacecilia]

HI ANDREW...
MY IM WORKING ON AN EXCEL FILE AND IT SUDDENLY STOPPED WORKING... ILOST AT LEAST A HAVE DAY OF WORK.
I AM SURPRISED THAT IT DOESNT AUTO SAVED.

CAN I STILL RECOVER WHAT IM WORKING AT?

 

[bryantk488]

HI ANDREW...

MY IM WORKING ON AN EXCEL FILE AND IT SUDDENLY STOPPED WORKING... ILOST AT LEAST A HAVE DAY OF WORK.

I AM SURPRISED THAT IT DOESNT AUTO SAVED.



CAN I STILL RECOVER WHAT IM WORKING AT?

<a href="http://drm-assistant.com/datarescue/xls-xlsx-file-undelete-software.html">Click here</a> to have a try doing the Excel Recovery