Excel

[Peter Fox]

I have many 3.5" floppies with Excel data written with

Excel Vers. 4.0 and Excel 7. I am now using Office Professional 2000 for Windows 95 and I get an error message telling me that the disk is the wrong format.

I am currently running Win 98 se.

[Doggie]

possibly the disks are in non-windows format, have been magnetized and no longer can work or Floppy drive may need fixing

[FthrJACK]

or do you mean the error is that the excel file is the wrong format?

[Doggie]

its a definte disk problem.. maybe he has used a Mac version of word that he had saved the info onto.. i've seen that problem often when ppl move from mac to pc

[gamehead200]

When did the Mac version of Excel come out?? My school never had it....They had ClarisWorks or somethin...

[Doggie]

long time ago.. like 1990's

[Peter Fox]

possibly the disks are in non-windows format, have been magnetized and no longer can work or Floppy drive may need fixing

The exact error message I get reads " File Name.xls is not valid" There is nothing wrong with my Drive.

I wrote to these disks with Excel4.0 and Excel 7 while running in Windows 95. I can read the files using Windows Explorer. I have tried the available formats offered in the Open Window and they don't work. I ran into this problem before trying to read MS Works disks in Excel. Any thoughts on this?

[FthrJACK]

The data might be damaged. This site has a usefull tool for recovering xls files:

http://www.officerecovery.com/excel/

Dwnload the demo: Here

Theres also another one at:

http://www.excelfix.com/features_howto.shtml

Download the demo: Here

You could also try by opening the document in excel running it in safe mode. This will disable VBA and Add-ins. Click on Start then Run then enter (including the quotes and the /s extension): "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\excel.exe" /s

if your still struggling and dont mind someone else seeing whats in the file i can try open it another way.

but that tool should be all you need. hope it does the trick

*copy the files off of the floppy and onto your desktop before running the recovery, if you manage to open them, save them elsewhere then bin the floppy.