Microsoft Excel has been with us ever since 1987. Today, it is the most popularly used application by businesses around the world. Companies can compile credits, financial records, vouchers, depict data & historical records into graphs and pivot tools, use complex mathematical formulas, convert data into an easy to interpret and clean form.
Sometimes, a technical glitch causes Excel to crash unexpectedly and end up corrupting the contents of your Excel workbook. Such data loss can have severe effects on the functioning of your business. If you’re looking to recover a corrupted Excel workbook, here are some helpful tips and tricks. So, let’s start!
What Causes your Excel Workbook to Become Corrupt?
There are multiple technical reasons that could lead to an excel file going bad.
- Software malfunctioning, compatibility issues, bugs can cause Excel to crash and corrupt the workbook that was open.
- A sudden power outage can shut down your PC and make your workbook unreadable.
- Physical damage to the hard drive due to wear and tear can corrupt your file.
- Data loss also occurs when your system is infected by a virus that overwrites your data and makes the original information inaccessible.
Recovering Corrupted Excel Workbooks
Method 1: Using Open and Repair
Excel has an in-house feature to recover your corrupted Excel worksheets. The steps are as follows:
- Open Microsoft Excel.
- Click on the File menu, and select Open.
- In the Open dialog box, select your corrupted Excel file.
- Click the drop-down arrow next to the Open button.
- Select Open and Repair.
- Click on Repair.
Method 2: Using Extract Data
Has the Excel file recovery failed to recover your worksheet?
If so, you can use the Extract Data option in the same Open and Repair function that we discussed earlier. The Extract data feature will extract values, formulas and other forms of data from your workbook.
Method 3: Disable Automatic Calculations
At times, automatic calculations become a hurdle while recovering your data. Try disabling this feature to see if it helps.
- Click on. File | New.
- Select Blank Workbook.
- Click on File | Options.
- Set the Calculation Options to Manual under the Formulas category.
- Click on OK to save the changes.
- Click on File, followed by Open.
- Locate your corrupted Excel workbook and then click on Open.
Method 4: Easily Fix Corrupted Excel Files Using Stellar Repair for Excel (Recommended)
Stellar Repair for Excel is a unique tool that simplifies Excel file recovery. Here are some of its distinct features:
Repair Excel Files No Matter How Large they are
Stellar Data Recovery splits your large Excel file into multiple small files and attempts to remove illegal characters and objects from the file contents.
Recover Files in Batch
A damaged hard disk or virus infection can render multiple files unusable. If you’ve got tens of Excel files that fail to load for any reason, batch file recovery can be a very handy feature.
Fix Multiple Errors
No matter whether your file name is invalid, file contents have become corrupted, or there are formatting issues, you can fix them all using this single tool.
Supports Recovering Workbooks Created with All Excel Versions
Stellar supports repairing your Excel workbook irrespective of whether you’ve created them with the latest version in the .XLSX format or older versions in the .XLS format.
