How to Recover a Corrupt Excel File. This wikiHow teaches you how to recover and repair a corrupted Microsoft Excel file on your Windows or Mac computer.
Hi Doug-M, What are the formatting of these files? Based on your description, I suppose this issue might be caused by the wrong File Association in Excel. First I suggest you try to reset file associations:. Please go to Control Panel.
Click Default Programs, and then click Set your default programs. Click Excel, and then click Choose default for this program.
On the Set Program Associations screen, click Select All, and then click Save. If this issue still exists, please try to repair your Office. About how to repair Office in Windows 10, please refer to this article: Any updates please let me know, I'm glad to help and follow up your reply.
Regards, Emi Zhang TechNet Community Support Please mark the reply as an answer if you find it is helpful. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact. Hi Doug-M, What are the formatting of these files?
Based on your description, I suppose this issue might be caused by the wrong File Association in Excel. First I suggest you try to reset file associations:. Please go to Control Panel. Click Default Programs, and then click Set your default programs. Click Excel, and then click Choose default for this program. On the Set Program Associations screen, click Select All, and then click Save. If this issue still exists, please try to repair your Office.
About how to repair Office in Windows 10, please refer to this article: Any updates please let me know, I'm glad to help and follow up your reply. Regards, Emi Zhang TechNet Community Support Please mark the reply as an answer if you find it is helpful. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact. I'm having the same problem. I've scoured the internet and have tried many recommended changes.
Repaired Excel, uninstalled/reinstalled, typed commands in the Admin prompt. I can't open any files that are sent to me. Keeps getting stuck on 'Opening in Protected View'.
And if it does get past that, I get them message that the file is corrupt. This must be FIXED! In my research it appears that this is a VERY common problem affecting many people. It renders me completely useless in my freelance work. It's embarrassing to tell clients 'I can't open your file.' It's obviously not corrupt. Microsoft, where are you?
Only way that I have found past this so far is to disable protected view in the trust center on Excel. Open Excel. Go to FileOptionsTrust Center. Click 'Trust Center Settings'.
Left hand Menu bar click 'Protected View' and uncheck the 3 checkboxes. restart excel and open the file you are attempting to open. I'd still like to try and dig into this a bit and figure out why exactly this problem is occurring but it seems to only be occurring on my office 2016 installs. Would be interested if someone finds another solution to this. I have experienced this problem using both excel 2013 and 2016. It may be a work around until this is unacceptable condition is corrected. I work with large files (greater than 25 M) with VBA macros and have often lost one to two days work.
I use 64 bit Excel and OS with 8 GB ram. I tried switching the file type to save the from xlsm to xlmb every couple of days stretches out the period between corruption. If I make the mistake of opening two versions of the same large file or another large no similar file, an 'excel has stopped working' message is prevented and the attempted recovery fails 100% of the time.
I have also noted that a lot of copying and pasting is occurring, I get a message the clipboard is full and it crashes. I can only say to save often and increment versions. I also find that if data from other spreadsheets are copied a lot of extraneous style formats appear to be added. I use a freeware program to clean these often with my strategy to switch file formats often.
I am embarrassed to describe such 'voodoo' with a product like this. I also was also able to get a work colleague who was using Excel 2013 32 bit and OS was 32 bit to actually open corrupted files. Sadly our IT department wisely updated all to 64 bit and this option is gone. I had noticed that saving large files over a network wan, also increased the chances for disaster. I also noticed that the file size was about 100kb small. I think manner in which the file is closed by excel is the culprit, but not sure.
Those files were recoverable but with using 32 bit excel as above. I have also noticed in recovered files in 2013, the macros were stripped out. I also notice that linked files what may have a password, never recover. I think the recovery file hangs when a linked to a password protected file or links may have been moved. I have been patient with waiting for a fix, but now worry there is none.
We think that file conversions between excel versions have introduced a time bomb. We are now starting to start with a fresh file and migrate our spreadsheets formula and data (copying). Well, we are not happy about that prospect. After doing this for two years, maybe rather than marketing new versions and subscription services, Microsoft fix this. I am sure the staff with their debugging tools can find why files are becoming corrected and large files can crash if not saved several times an hour. I share this in the hope there may be clues as to where the problem may lie and what I have done to survive. Have an amazing day.
I have been successfully creating and opening files in Excel 2016. Now I get a message that many of these files are corrupt and cannot be opened. I have tried opening with the Save & Repair option no luck there. What is disconcerting is the fact that these very same files open successfully with Excel 2010. Everyone of them!!
Anyone have any idea what is happening? Hi Every one, i had the same problem, and i think a got to a possible solution that worked for me already. Open the file on excel online from the cloud. Then Save as (the same file you just opened), change the name, and save it in the same folder. Now try to open it from your computer. It worked for me, hope it can help.