File format is not valid

F

FB

Can anyone help me with this. I tried to open an existing file (which a
number of people have access to) and it has come up with this error.
Can it be fixed?
Thanks heaps.
 
D

Dave Peterson

One of the bad things about Office is that MSWord can open .xls files. And if
the file is saved as a Word Document (even with a .xls extension), then that
file can no longer be opened by excel.

Try this against a copy--no sense taking a chance that you'll do more damage.

Start up MSWord
File|open that copy of your .xls file.

If it opens there, then there's a pretty good chance that some user saved it as
an MSWord file. You may be able to save a bit of it by just copying and pasting
into a new workbook in Excel. But you'll probably have lots of work to do to
recreate it (or maybe just restore from a backup???).

=====
If that's not it....

Sometimes, you can open files in a later version of excel. (Maybe xl2002,
xl2003???)

Lots of people have said that they could save a great deal of the data/code
using OpenOffice.org.

http://www.openoffice.org, a 60-65 meg download or a CD

There are commercial recovery services. I've never used it, but you might want
to check into:
http://www.officerecovery.com
 
F

FB

You are a SUPER STAR. It opened in word and it had all the data in seperate
pages. So thank you. It will take a bit of work to copy and paste but it is
doable.
It was our lost property log and we have not entirely computer literate
people that have to use it.

Thanks once again.
 
D

Dave Peterson

You may want to start making backups of important files. You never know when
things will be gone forever.
 
Top