Excel File corrupted by word file

[Guest]

Hi all,

Sure hope somebody can help me with this problem. I tried to open a
spreadsheet this morning, and it came up with file format is not valid
message. I found that I can open it in word, but the contents are actually a
word document that I haven't even looked at for a while. I then opened it
with notepad and it appears as though the word document is somehow overlaying
the spreadsheet information, as I can see some of the excel stuff futher
down. I shall be gutted if I loose this one, it's my finance spreadsheet for
the whole year. Being a good person, it's backed up, but the backup copy is
the same. Help :-(

Excel 2003 with XP

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

RJM,

The most likely thing is that someone opened the xls file in Word, then
saved. Now it's a Word file. No formulas. Spreadsheet functionality lost
for good. It's outrageous on the part of Microsoft that this hasn't been
changed, but Word, though it warns the user, overlays the original xls file
with a word file. It ain't a spreadsheet any more. Still has the xls
extension. No one hears your screams.

 

[Bruce Sinclair]

RJM,

The most likely thing is that someone opened the xls file in Word, then
saved. Now it's a Word file. No formulas. Spreadsheet functionality lost
for good. It's outrageous on the part of Microsoft that this hasn't been
changed, but Word, though it warns the user, overlays the original xls file
with a word file. It ain't a spreadsheet any more. Still has the xls
extension. No one hears your screams.

Might be possible to recover the data by copying from word and pasting it
into xl again. Has been known to work ... and yet ... see above

Best of luck.

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

Bruce,

True. You can paste Word stuff into Excel. But formulas are gone -- you
get only the values the formulas yielded at the time of the crime.
Conditional formatting - gone. Macros - gone. Scenarios, sheet names, most
formatting (locked, number formatting, etc. etc.) and way more, all gone.
It's just a bunch of static tables, one per original sheet, now.

It's true that Word warns that the file will be saved in Word format, but
its keeping the xls extension causes it to overwrite the original workbook
file. That's the outrage. That should have been fixed releases ago. With
all the billions floating around at Microsoft, there must be a programmer
somewhere they could hire to take care of something as simple and serious as
this. The Excel group should be raising total hell with the Word group if
they have any guts at all.