My guess is that the Excel data files are OK (and will be provided that you
don't open them in Word or another program and save from there). It looks
like you've lost your Excel installation, so you'll need to reinstall the
Excel application from your Office CD.
--
David Biddulph

"dperryorama" wrote in message
...
My boyfriend's computer crashed and when he got the hard drive back there
are
no excel files on it and most of his files are now Word files, but they're
not really Word files as when we try to open them, we're told they're in
another format. The computer wants a Small Business disk to open the
files
(which we don't have and never had -- he was working from Office for
Students
and Teachers 2002). Any idea on how to recover the files? I've tried
changing the extension, but they still show up as Word files and won't
open.