Problem opening floppy disc in Excel

[Michele]

My computer crashed and burned a couple of weeks ago and it contained a
very important spreadsheet on my hard drive. The computer was
spontaneously restarting every minute or so and because of this I was
having a hard time getting files saved on CD or floppy disc. I managed
to get it on floppy disc (I know this because I was able to check it on
another computer). I was not successful at saving it to CD. I tried
to open the floppy tonight and retrieve the information but I received
the following message: "The disc in drive A has not been formatted.
Do you want to format now?" Of course I did not do it as it would erase
any information contained on the disc. Why is this happening? Any
suggestions on how to retrieve the data?

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Michele,
If you really have the information on the floppy drive, I don't know why
you are getting the message you indicate.

Does the file actually show in the directory, and does it have a size.

Never directly open a file from removable media directly from Excel,
nor save or update directly from Excel to removable media.
You risk you file if you do, and even if the file is not destroyed you
have the problem that
1) Excel must be able to store another file of at least the same size
at least once to the floppy while retaining the original.
2) When copying from a CD you are likely to have the read-only bit set.

More information in http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/backup.htm

You might be better off starting with an empty floppy when you copy
a closed Excel file to your floppy,. Then copy from the floppy to
your another hard drive.


"Michele" <whiteteeth1972... wrote ...

 

[Michele]

Hi David, thanks for replying. The file doesn't show in the directory
now. When I put the disc in my A drive the disc is not formatted
message comes up. Unfortunately this is the only copy of the data that
I have as my other computer was cooked. I was not able to retrieve any
data from it other than what I managed to get saved on floppy.

 

[Michele]

Hi David, thanks for replying. The file doesn't show in the directory
now. When I put the disc in my A drive the disc is not formatted
message comes up. Unfortunately this is the only copy of the data that
I have as my other computer was cooked. I was not able to retrieve any
data from it other than what I managed to get saved on floppy.

 

[Michele]

Hi David, thanks for replying. The file doesn't show in the directory
now. When I put the disc in my A drive the disc is not formatted
message comes up. Unfortunately this is the only copy of the data that
I have as my other computer was cooked. I was not able to retrieve any
data from it other than what I managed to get saved on floppy.

 

[David F Cox]

This is probably caused by an incompatible setup between the flopy disk
drive that it was recorded on and the one that you are trying to read it on.

The first thing I would do is copy the file to the hard disk on the computer
that could read it.

If that works I would copy the file to another floppy and try that. If that
does not work I would try other media, copy to a recordable CD, or to a USB
stick if those things are possible.

If you cannot copy the file to the hard disk because it now fails I would
try and retrieve the floppy from the dead computer, if you have not done so
already, and try using that. You stand the best chance of reading a floppy
using the drive it was recorded on.

Another possible cause, if very old computers are involved, is that on of
the floppy drives was set up as an incompatible type, 720K instead of 1.44M
for example. This is very unlikely.

 

[Michele]

First off, sorry for the multiple posts of the same reply. Each time I
hit the back button it would resend the message. I can't retrieve the
hard disk from the dead computer-I was told it was fried so I had it
disposed of. The computer I checked the floppy disk on is the dead
computer as well so I can't copy it to the hard disk. I checked to
make sure the file was saved on floppy (it was) before I took the
computer in for service. The new computer I purchased does not have an
A drive so I tried to open it on my husbands laptop. It is here that I
am receiving the error message. I will take it to work with me
tomorrow and see if it reads any differently in a different computer.
I sure hope so, because otherwise I have just lost countless hours of
work, some of which can not be duplicated.

 

[David F Cox]

If all else fails see if you can retrieve the floppy from the dead computer.
It is unlikely to be harmed. It should be possible to install it in the new
PC. Though I suspect that it may have been disposed of by the service guy.
Tell him how important it is that you retrieve it, he is likely to regard it
as junk and not worth the bother otherwise.

If it is really, really important and nothing else has worked a good
engineer might be able to tweak a disk drive to read it. I have done this
for a customer in the past, but it took hours to get it right.