data damaged

[Guest]

I have an Excel spreadsheet that I have been using for several months. I
opened it this morning and all the data on the sheet had been turned into
symbols. When I open it there is a message that says the format is
unrecognizabe and asks if I want to open it anyway. When I do all that is
there are the symbols. I've tried recovery programs and the open and repair
option in excel. Could anyone tell me what has happened? And what I might do
about it...I do not have a backup..I know I should have...please if anyone
knows what happened please let me know.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Any chance you opened the workbook in MSWord and saved it as an MSWord file
(even with a .xls extension)??

I think I'd make a copy of the file (first, do no damage) and see if MSWord can
open it. If it can, you may be able to extract/save a little information.