transfer error

[brian bratton]

had a strange thing happen to one of my employees today. He was copying up
his excel documents to a CD last Tuesday, for some reason it change all of
this letters to some a bunch of symbols and junk and it also messed up my
original too… Is there any way of getting my documents back?

i had someone help me here is what we talked about:
It sounds like the font may just have changed (symbol fonts like Wingdings
are available fonts in any Office font list – same place where you select
fonts like Arial or Calibri)… do you know how to check to see if a different
font was applied to the workbook? What version of Excel are you using?
Brian:
2003, I can go into a cell and start typing and it is English

Select one of the cells that has gibberish in it. Then, on the Formatting
toolbar – look to see what font is applied (there’s a font box on the
Formatting toolbar). Or, if you don’t see that toolbar – on the Format menu,
click Font. Let me know what it says.

It says Ariel on it.

That’s interesting. Then the font isn’t the issue. Does the workbook text
look corrupted regardless of what computer you open it on? If you haven’t
tried opening it on more than one computer, please do.

Also – would you be able to send me a screenshot of a piece of a page that
has distorted content without sharing anything sensitive or confidential?

I have tried to open it on several pc and it all looks the same. I have
attached a screen shot

if someone knows anything that would be great.

 

[bj]

if you change the font do the characters change?
more than just selecting the cell, select some of the characters in the
cell and see what font they say they are.

 

[brian bratton]

i tried going in and selecting the characters and i can change the to
whatever, wingdings and back to times new roman but it is just about of junk.

 

[bj]

An encryption may have been done to the program.
tools>options>security
if there is a standard password, try it to unlock
If he does you might check if he tries a de-encryption if it will get it
back.

 

[brian bratton]

ok, i went in and there is no password and he has not encrypted the program.

 

[bj]

I think you said the original file was corrupted too. if he did not
officilally save it, this almost certainly is a virus of some type. I do
not know of any out there which do this, so you may have the honor(or
horror?) of being the first hit.

if you know what some of the cells had in them, you might be able to look
for a direct character substitution.

For example if your name was in one cell and the character length of the the
original cell and the corrupted cell is the same and any double or tripple
letters in your name has double or triple character duplication try find
replace on the different letters. note check how many of the letters your are
changing to are there and replace them with some character not otherwise
found so that you do not further corrupt the file if it is a simple
substitution, you may be able to get your informaion back.

 

[brian bratton]

ok, i will let him know, but i dont think it is virus because it only happen
to my one file, not any of the other 15 or so files that i copied over to the
CD. thanks for all your help. i will try trying to find something out.