Excel Repair (Table of Contents)
Introduction to Excel Repair
It is my personal experience when working on an excel file with huge data set or maybe with complicated formulas; I faced a situation when the file gets in the NOT RESPONDING phase, or maybe the file gets crashed or corrupted. In all the situations, either we lose the data or the file itself would not be opened. But there is still some hope or chances that we could open that file. And it is possible only by repairing it.
Examples of Excel Repair
There are multiple ways to repair any corrupted or crashed file, which we will be seeing them in upcoming examples.
Example #1
The best and simple way to recover the data is by trying to open the damaged file through an already opened which means we can try to open the file which is corrupted with the OPEN option. For this, we should have an opened file.
Now go to the File menu option, and from the Open option, select Browse, as shown below.
Browse the file location and select the file which we want to re-open.
By this, we can recover the file at the moment when it was the last auto-saved. By this, we can automatically recover the file data from the last saved time.
Example #2
This is another way to repair the file and recover the data from that. And this process is quite similar to the example-1. We also need to open an excel file first, through which we will recover the damaged file.
Go to the File menu option the opened Excel file. And from the Open option, select Browse.
Now browse the file location and select the file from there, as shown below.
Click on the drop-down arrow located in the Open button and Select open and repair.
After that, we will get an alert message where we will have 3 options, Repair, Extract Data, and Cancel.
Below are the significance of the above options;
Repair – This will repair the file which is crashed or corrupted. By this, we can recover the data as well.
Extract Data – If we previously tried to Repair the excel file and was unsuccessful, then later we can try to extract the data using the Extract Data option.
If excel is able to repair the file, then it will direct us to the last saved worksheet of that file. If not, we will again get a dialogue box where it will prompt us to message incomplete repair or repairing process discarded.
Example #3 – Excel Repair
The above example was the simple repair function to repair any file. In this example, we will see an advanced way to repair excel. In this example, we will how to create a backup of the excel file automatically so that we would recover the data if the file crashes.
For this, open any workbook and click on Save As option from the File menu or press the F12 function key.
Then from the Save As window, click on the drop-down arrow from the Tool button and Select General Options from there.
After that, we will get the General Options window as shown below. There, we can check the box (Tick) for allowing the window to create a backup. And also, we can set the password to open and modify the file as well.
Example #4
There is another way to repair any excel file. This also comes under the advanced option for repairing the excel workbook. This option can be accessed from the File menu tab Option.
Now from the Calculation option under the Formulas tab, select Manual and check the box (Tick) of Recalculate workbook before saving. Then click on OK to exit.
To test this function, go to the file which is corrupted and try to recover the data using this option.
Pros:
- We can repair any type of file.
- With the option shown in different examples, we can repair other Microsoft files as well apart from Excel files.
- Activating all or any option shown in the above examples will help us avoiding the chances of a file crash.
Things to Remember
- Creating a backup of important data always helps.
- If you are still facing the problem of repairing the corrupted files, then this can also be resolved using third party software or an online tool to repair the file.
- To avoid crashing of files, enable the autosave function in Microsoft Excel. Or, keep saving the files frequently so that there will not able any chance of files getting crashed or corrupted.
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