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Corrupt excel .XLS file (OLE header corruption?)


CharlesMorris

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I have several old excel files that got corrupted when a server had a power surge. I attach one here. They were being used on a Windows 7 client and I have tried to fix with disk utility, many excel file repair packages on mac and pc and online, tried also opening in alternate software like open office and JMP to no avail. Is there any hope for this data?EPC-Study-Cell-Counter-DataQ3.rar

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I have tried a hexeditor on it but did not manage getting the contents of the file to load in LibreOffice.
 
However I did manage to get the contents of the file to display in LibreOffice after uploading the file to an online recovery service
 
Here are the contents of the first 20 lines in csv format:

,"V3B 24P,  Sample received on 4/16/12, were requested to run"1,INOBA 139A32,GB-EUH 042173,GB-EUH 042284,GB-EUH 042455,GB-EUH 042216,GB-EUH 042237,GB-EUH 042118,GB-EUH 042369,GB-EUH 0422010,GB-EUH 0421811,GB-EUH 0424712,GB-EUH 0426513,GB-EUH 0425514,GB-EUH 0424615,GB-EUH 0423716,GB-EUH 0424917,GB-EUH 0424818,GB-EUH 0425419,GB-EUH 04239

The full file contains 3800 lines of this information, but the file recovery service I used only listed the first 20 lines for free.

Edited by Acheron
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  • 2 weeks later...

When an Excel file is corrupted, then you can try several methods to recover it:

1. First of all, you can try to repair the file manually in Excel, as follows:

(1) On the File menu, click Open.

(2) In the Open dialog box, select the file you want to open, and click the arrow next to the Open button.

(3) Click Open and Repair, and then choose which method you want to use to recover your workbook.

You may find more information about this at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/repairing-corrupted-files-in-excel-HA001034656.aspx (for Excel 2003)

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/repairing-a-corrupted-workbook-HA010097017.aspx?CTT=1 (for Excel 2007)

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/repairing-a-corrupted-workbook-HA010342840.aspx?CTT=1 (for Excel 2010)

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/repair-a-corrupted-workbook-HA102749554.aspx?CTT=1(for Excel 2013)

2. If method 1 fails, there are still several methods to recover your Excel file manually with Excel, including writing a small VBA macro, as below

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/repair-a-corrupted-workbook-HA102749554.aspx?CTT=1#_Toc337637262

3. For xlsx files, they are actually a group of files compressed in Zip file format. Therefore, sometimes, if the corruption is only caused by the Zip file, then you can use Zip repair tools such as WinRAR to repair the file, as follows:

3.1 Assuming the corrupt Excel file is a.xlsx, then you need to rename it to a.zip 

3.2 Start WinRAR, go to "Tools > Repair Archive" to repair a.zip and generated a fixed file a_fixed.zip. 

3.3 Rename a_fixed.zip back to a_fixed.xlsx 

3.4 Using Excel to open a_fixed.xlsx. 

 

There may still be some warnings when opening the fixed file in Excel, just ignore them and Excel will try to open and repair the fixed file. If the file can be opened successfully, then you can just save the contents into another error-free file.

Good luck!

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