Excel file corruption when opened with Word?

N

nfe

Ive had a few problems with opening an Excel file with word only to them
try open it with Excel again to be prompted with a message saying this
is an invalid file type. Any had or solved this problem before? Its
Excel/Word 2000.

Thanks
 
K

Kevin B

Do you mean that the Excel file is corrupted after being inserted as an Excel
file object in a Word document (Insert/Object on the Word menu), or are you
actually trying to open an Excel file with Word?

When you are opening and Excel file from Word it runs a converter and
converts the entire workbook or specified tab. To the best of my knowledge
you cannot save the Word doc as an Excel file, and if you're typing in the
"xls" extension you're merely changing the extension of the file, not the
file type.
 
N

nfe

It is an Excel file.

It was opened accidentally by a user in Word.

When the user then correctly tried to open the file using Excel, it
wouldn't open giving the file corrupt, incorrect file error message.

I can restore the original Excel files however this obviously takes a
bit of time.
 
P

Patricia Shannon

What is the current file extension? It sounds like the user did a save
while in Word.
If the extension is .xls, I would copy the file, and change the extension of
the copy to .doc, and open it with Word. If it looks like a Word table, copy
the table and paste it into an Excel spreadsheet. I was able to Ctrl+C the
Word table and Ctrl+v into cell A1 of an Excel sheet.
 
D

Dave Peterson

You can save a word document with any old extension you want--including .xls.
And this makes the resulting file an MSWord file--not excel.

In fact, if the user just opened the excel file in MSWord and then was unlucky
enough for MSWord's autosave to kick it, that would be enough to cause this
damage.

You may be able to retrieve some of your data (don't get your hopes up too far),
buy reopening the file in Word and just copying and pasting.

Any chance you have backups? Maybe an earlier version that you emailed
someone. It might even be in your Sent folder in your email program???
 
N

nfe

It appears our company autosave is kicking in quickly.

So far we have been able to salvage files from A : Backups and B : the
copy paste method. Although the latter is a real pain as all formatting
is lost.

Thanks for your replies.
 
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