Excel File Won't Open!

[Lara]

All right. I currently have a certain excel file that I
use as a database - that is, I store information in each
cell, so I can scroll through and read at will. The
problem: I've been doing this for years, and the file is
huge. Today, when I tried to open it, it not only refused
but crashed Excel. Now, the file is 7.60 MB. If there any
limit on how big Excel files can get, and that's why it's
messing up? If so, how can I fix this? This file has very
important data in it that I need access to. Please, please
e-mail me if you have any ideas at all - and thank you
from the bottom of my heart.
-Lara

 

[Jan Karel Pieterse]

Hi,

Options to try and open a corrupt file

- Set calculation to manual
- open the file, but disable macros (assuming you've set
macro security to medium: Tools, Macro, security)
- As soon as you've clicked the disable macros button,
press control-pageup or control-pagedown, thus changing
sheets.

If that does not work, try creating a link to the file:

='c:\my documents\[MyFileName.xls]Sheet1'!A1

and copy right and down. This at least gets you the
worksheets values.

if you don't know the sheet names, enter this:

='C:\PathToFile\[MyFileName.xls]'!A1

and press enter

If XL (2000) is able to extract them, it will prompt you
for a sheet name.

Sometimes the Excel viewer, Word or even Internet explorer
(v5) enables you to open the file and copy information out
of it.

If the file is not protected, maybe you can open it with
OpenOffice (www.Openoffice.org).

Also, Excel XP can sometimes repair XL files with trouble.


Regards,

Jan Karel Pieterse
Excel TA/MVP