The advantage of working with Microsoft Excel is that it provides quite a few options for dealing with corrupted Excel files or damaged XLS files. Using one or the other method, you could try to restore data that would have otherwise been completely lost. While there is an automatic recovery option, Excel also allows the user to try and recover the file through manual methods. And of course, if everything else fails, one could always try recovery tools such Advanced Excel Repair. Many of these tools come with a wide range of features that help the user carry out a speedy XLS repair without any difficulty.
1. The quickest way of recovering a damaged Excel file is through the auto recovery option. When you try to open a corrupted Excel file, Microsoft will try to repair the file simultaneously. If it is not successful in repairing the file, it will at least make sure that the data is recovered.
- If you are working on an Excel workbook and you find that the file becomes damaged before you can save the changes, you can always revert back to the last saved version thereby losing just the last few changes that you might have made to the file. This is a fairly effective method of XLS repair because Excel discards any changes that might have caused the file to get damaged.
- Finally, you could try saving the XLS file in a SYLK format ' SYmbolic LinK format. When you save the file in this format, it makes it easier to identify and discard the elements that might have caused corruption in the file in the first place. The only disadvantage in using this method is that this format can save only one active worksheet at a time. Therefore, if your damaged workbook contains many worksheets, you might have to open the workbook that many times and save each individual worksheet contained in the workbook.
- If all these attempts at carrying out an XLS repair fail and you do not want to lose important data contained in the file, you could open your corrupted file in Microsoft WordPad or even Microsoft Office Word. While it is not possible to recover content such as embedded charts or macro sheets, you will certainly be able to recover the data and possibly the results of some of the formulas used in the worksheets.
