Five Easy Ways to Repair Excel Files and Recover Lost Data

Microsoft Excel files are arguably the most widely used office files. Excel spreadsheet Corrupted papers mean lost essential data. That would have a serious impact on your organization.

Although if you back up your Excel files on a regular basis, corruption can occur. Because backup files do not always include your most recent work, you will most likely have to re-enter the data. If feasible, repairing a corrupted workbook is a preferable alternative. Spreadsheet can indeed be handy in this situation.

When you load a corrupted worksheet, Excel enters Data Recovery mode and tries to repair it. That’s fantastic if it works! Unfortunately, Excel’s automatic file recovery tool does not always successfully recover a corrupted Excel files. When this happens, you’ll need backup plans. First, try the simplest answers. The more sophisticated solutions often restore data but not formulae, styling, charts, or scripts.

What Is the Root Cause of Excel Document Corruption?

If you wish to restore corrupted or faulty Excel files, you must first try to figure out what created the initial problem.

Virus attack: Your Excel files might be attacked with malware or viruses, causing significant damage to their essential aspects.

Mismanaging of files: Among the most common causes of an Excel file being damaged is due to improper file treatment (such as shutting down or turning off your device when the file is still running).

Damaged storage: It is possible that the division or external storage facility where your Excel files are stored has been destroyed or manipulated.

Aside from that, there might be a problem with your Excel file’s metadata, heading, or indeed any other element, resulting in a slew of technical errors.

Furthermore, difficulties such as editing the file on multiple versions of Microsoft Office Applications, larger data size, problems with the OS, issues with the Ms Office Suite, abandoning Excel files accessible on a shared network, and so on might destroy an Excel file.

5 Simple Methods for Repairing Excel Files and Recovering Lost Data

Upon learning about many of the key flaws with Excel files, let us just look at how to resolve them using these clever solutions:

1st Method: Remove all unnecessary temporary Excel data

There may be a problem with the saved short-term files in MS Excel that causes a discrepancy with your files at times. This problem, however, is readily fixed by uninstalling any additional Office data from your device.

To do the same, simply run Windows Explorer and navigate to the Windows disk (such as the C: drive). Afterwards, go to Users > [User id] > AppData > Local > Microsoft > Office.

You can search for records with the “tmp” extension and delete them from your disk using this one.Following that, you can reload MS Excel and attempt to load your faulty XLS file.

2nd Method: In MS Excel, Use the Built-in Repair Function

Ms. has included an in-built fixing option to make things easier for us to correct minor faults with our office documents. As a result, if your XLS or XLSX files are just slightly damaged, you may easily fix them using this software’s inherent capability.

Simply run the MS Excel program and navigate to the Settings > File > Open function to repair damaged and corrupt Excel files. You can now easily find and pick up the damaged Excel document that was stored on your machine.

Rather than loading it in the traditional manner in Excel, you may now use the pulldown menu button next to the Open function. Alternatively, you may choose the “View and Repair” option and wait for MS Excel to attempt to repair the specified document.

3rd Method: Use an antivirus program to scan your corrupted XLS file

Your Excel file might become damaged if it is exposed to a virus or malware. As a result, you may easily scan damaged or corrupted Excel files using a security solution to fix them.

To apply this repair, just pick the Excel file, right-click it, and then choose to scan it with any reputable antivirus software. Although if you don’t really have any anti-malware applications installed, you may check the file using Microsoft Defender, Windows’ built-in security utility.

After the scan is finished, you may open MS Excel and try to load the faulty document.

4th Method: Delete inappropriate MS Excel add-ins

It has been shown that the inclusion of any untrustworthy add-ins in MS Office might likewise trigger a slew of undesired consequences. Deleting these add-ins is the best technique to fix corrupted and faulty Excel files caused by any app-related problem.

To fix the problem, just run MS Excel and navigate to its menu > File > Settings. As soon as the specialized Excel Options window opens, navigate to the Add-ins area from the side.

Next, you can choose any add-in you wish to uninstall and delete it by clicking the “Actions” option in the navigation pane. You may even go to the “Manage Add-ins” option here to remove any add-in straight from Excel.

5th Method: Analyze and modify the file extension

It’s conceivable that your current edition of Microsoft Office does not accept the file extension of your excel file. Switch the file format from.xls to.xlsx. Perform the following actions:

• Save the impacted excel file to the base of a disk on your computer, such as the “D” disk.
• Launch Cmd.
• Enter the disk address wherever you saved the impacted excel file. For instance, input “D” and hit enter to Continue.
• Execute the following command: Ren Book10.xlsx NewExt.xls (In this case, Book10.xlsx is the impacted excel file with the previous extension, and NewExt.xls is the same affected file with the.xls extension).
• Simply open the file now just to check whether the problem has been addressed.

If you follow the above five steps, then there is a possibility that you can get additional fixes. But there is an issue with data loss. In this situation, you don’t have any options without using a Excel File Recovery tool. There are some manual processes. But they aren’t effective for all situations.