Corupted file? "Unable to read file"

  • Thread starter Thread starter jcreaney
  • Start date Start date
J

jcreaney

I am receiving the following error message when trying to open an excel
file.

"Unable to read file"

The file contains pivot tables, but no links to external files.
Passwords protect both the file and the sheets within.
The file was created using Excel 98, however I am trying to open it
using Excel 2002.

Any ideas would be greatly received.

Thanks
 
jcreaney said:
I am receiving the following error message when trying to open an excel
file.

"Unable to read file"

The file contains pivot tables, but no links to external files.
Passwords protect both the file and the sheets within.
The file was created using Excel 98, however I am trying to open it
using Excel 2002.

Any ideas would be greatly received.

Thanks
Click to expand...

This message means that the file is corrupted, i.e. that it was not
correctly written to the disk. For practical purposes it is unusable. You
would need specialist (forensic-type) techniques to retrieve any parts of it
that are intact. I hope you have a backup copy; if not, I'm sorry, but you
have now learned the importance of backups.

As an aside, file corruption often happens if you try to save a file direct
from Excel to a floppy (or open one direct from a floppy). You should always
work from/to hard disk, and copy to/from removable media using Windows
Explorer or similar.
 
If you opened that workbook in word and saved it in word, then it's a word file
now (albeit with a .xls extension).

If you did this, you may be able to recover some stuff by opening the file in
Word and copy|pasting to a new workbook in excel--but lots may be lost.

Did you get the error message when you did a File|open inside excel or when you
double clicked on it in windows explorer? (Try file|open at least once.)

And a few people have reported success using OpenOffice to
open their workbooks and recover both the worksheet data and macro code:

http://www.openoffice.org, a 60-65 meg download or a CD
 
Are you going from Mac to Windows when you have this problem?

You said Excel 98, and that makes me think Mac. If this is the case,
you may want to go back to the Mac (I hope the original file is still
there), remove the file password, and save as an Excel 97 file. Try
to open that on the other machine. If you are using a floppy disk,
try using a network drive or e-mail the file to yourself to get it to
the other machine.

Just trying to lend some hope on a seemingly hopeless situation!



-Mike



...
The file contains pivot tables, but no links to external files.
Passwords protect both the file and the sheets within.
The file was created using Excel 98, however I am trying to open it
using Excel 2002.
...
Click to expand...
..
Mike Argy
Custom Office Solutions
and Windows/UNIX applications

Please post on-topic responses to the newsgroup

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