I have an extremely important xls Worksheet file, which of
course, no back up was made. I am trying to fix it for somebody but I
keep
hitting dead ends. I have Excel 2003 here, but if I try opening it up
in
any version it comes up with the error "Unable to read file". I am
just not sure where the 'corruptness' of the file is. What would make
my life easier would be a program that would
automatically fix an Excel file.. but if theres not does anybody know
where
I might find information on the XLS format?

Thanks!

On May 24, 10:17*pm, Gasol wrote:
I have an extremely important xls Worksheet *file, which of
course, no back up was made. *I am trying to fix it for somebody but I
keep
hitting dead ends. *I have Excel 2003 here, but if I try opening it up
in
any version it comes up with the error "Unable to read file". I am
just not sure where the 'corruptness' of the file is. *What would make
my life easier would be a program that would
automatically fix an Excel file.. but if theres not does anybody know
where
I might find information on the XLS format?

Thanks!

Hi,

I think you can try a utility called Advanced Excel Repair to repair
your Excel xls file. It works rather well for my corrupt Excel xls
files. Its web address is http://www.datanumen.com/aer/ Hope this
helps.

Alan

Did you try open office? Just yesterday, I inadvertently had a udf and a sub
named the same and 2003 and 2007 would just freeze. Fixed.

--
Don Guillett
Microsoft MVP Excel
SalesAid Software

"Gasol" wrote in message
...
I have an extremely important xls Worksheet file, which of
course, no back up was made. I am trying to fix it for somebody but I
keep
hitting dead ends. I have Excel 2003 here, but if I try opening it up
in
any version it comes up with the error "Unable to read file". I am
just not sure where the 'corruptness' of the file is. What would make
my life easier would be a program that would
automatically fix an Excel file.. but if theres not does anybody know
where
I might find information on the XLS format?

Thanks!

What is the rest of the error message?

Excel should give more info about why it is unreadable.

Could be as simple as not having double quotes around the path in your shortcut
to open.

"C:\your path to file folder\filename.xls"

But, if Excel thinks the workbook is corrupted, Open Office seems to have good
luck in opening Excel files.

http://www.openoffice.org, a 120 meg download or a CD


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Sat, 24 May 2008 07:17:42 -0700 (PDT), Gasol wrote:

I have an extremely important xls Worksheet file, which of
course, no back up was made. I am trying to fix it for somebody but I
keep
hitting dead ends. I have Excel 2003 here, but if I try opening it up
in
any version it comes up with the error "Unable to read file". I am
just not sure where the 'corruptness' of the file is. What would make
my life easier would be a program that would
automatically fix an Excel file.. but if theres not does anybody know
where
I might find information on the XLS format?

Thanks!