Indifferent from other Microsoft Office files, MS Excel too is prone to corruption. There can be various reasons for MS Excel file corruption such as unexpected MS Excel application shutdown, virus infection, abrupt system shutdown, or sometimes larger size of MS Excel file. Though MS Excel provides some measures to handle the corruption but there are times when these measures fail and we are left with nothing but an inaccessible MS Excel file! However, even at this situation you need not to worry as there are third-party Excel recovery tools available which can repair corrupt or damaged Excel sheets and recover their various objects.
Let us understand it with a practical example. Consider you are using MS Excel 2007 and working on a fairly complex Excel file for few days. This file has VBA code and lots of formulas. However, another day after reaching your office when you tried to open this file, encountered the below mentioned error message:
“Cannot open file because the file format or file extension is not valid.”
This error message created the devastating situation of data loss as it makes your Excel file inaccessible. To resolve this issue, you must understand the cause behind it.
Cause:
The most prominent cause for encountering such issue is MS Excel file corruption. The corruption in MS Excel file is generally caused due to below mentioned reasons:
Abrupt system shut down while MS Excel file is open.
Improper closing of Excel file.
Virus infection.
Resolutions:
You can try below mentioned steps to solve the problem:
Try to open the file in Open and Repair mode. To do this follow the below mentioned steps:
Create the copy of this file with the original file extension and note the location of this copy.
Now, open a blank workbook in Excel and then close this blank workbook.
Click Office button then click Open.
Go to the copy of the Excel file you have created and then highlight it.
There in the lower area, you have an Open button and at the right side of this button there are various options in the drop down are available. From there choose Open and Repair.
Then when you are asked about ‘Excel can perform checks…’, select Repair.
Generally, Open and Repair utility repairs your Excel file but if it fails then you are suggested to opt for reliable third-party Excel repair software. One of the authentic and reliable software to recover Excel file is Stellar Phoenix Excel Recovery software. The software repairs corrupt or damaged Excel files and restores engineering formula, numbers, tables, user defined charts, cell comments, work sheet properties, etc applied to your Excel file. In addition, the software is compatible with MS Excel 2010, 2007, 2003, and 2000.
Let us understand it with a practical example. Consider you are using MS Excel 2007 and working on a fairly complex Excel file for few days. This file has VBA code and lots of formulas. However, another day after reaching your office when you tried to open this file, encountered the below mentioned error message:
“Cannot open file because the file format or file extension is not valid.”
This error message created the devastating situation of data loss as it makes your Excel file inaccessible. To resolve this issue, you must understand the cause behind it.
Cause:
The most prominent cause for encountering such issue is MS Excel file corruption. The corruption in MS Excel file is generally caused due to below mentioned reasons:
Abrupt system shut down while MS Excel file is open.
Improper closing of Excel file.
Virus infection.
Resolutions:
You can try below mentioned steps to solve the problem:
Try to open the file in Open and Repair mode. To do this follow the below mentioned steps:
Create the copy of this file with the original file extension and note the location of this copy.
Now, open a blank workbook in Excel and then close this blank workbook.
Click Office button then click Open.
Go to the copy of the Excel file you have created and then highlight it.
There in the lower area, you have an Open button and at the right side of this button there are various options in the drop down are available. From there choose Open and Repair.
Then when you are asked about ‘Excel can perform checks…’, select Repair.
Generally, Open and Repair utility repairs your Excel file but if it fails then you are suggested to opt for reliable third-party Excel repair software. One of the authentic and reliable software to recover Excel file is Stellar Phoenix Excel Recovery software. The software repairs corrupt or damaged Excel files and restores engineering formula, numbers, tables, user defined charts, cell comments, work sheet properties, etc applied to your Excel file. In addition, the software is compatible with MS Excel 2010, 2007, 2003, and 2000.
