MSWord will open .xls files. And you can save that file in MSWord as a word
document but with .xls as the extension.

If you try opening the file in MSWord and it works, then you can copy and paste
into a new excel workbook to save a small part of the data.

If all your backups are saved as word documents, I think you're in big
trouble--any chance there's a backup that your IT department made???

====
If it's not saving in MSWord that caused the trouble,...

Sometimes, opening the file in OpenOffice and saving there will help:
http://www.openoffice.org, a 60-65 meg download or a CD

Sometimes, later versions of excel can open a file that earlier versions can't.

tkay wrote:

I have Excel workbooks that I have been using over a period of years.
Recently, I have encountered a problem opening the workbooks and get the
message that "the file is an unrecognizable format". If I open it in text
mode, it is not usable data. Files that have been just fine will suddenly
have this problem. I have backups but once excel refuses to open the
document, I get the same message trying to open the backups. I have emailed
the files to another computer and it still won't open. So it appears that
something is corrupting the files. Any ideas?

--

Dave Peterson