Cannot read file

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I have an excel workbook that I have saved on CD which I read & write to everyday. Now when I go to open, I have the error message "Cannot read file", then, Excel shuts down. I can open Excel files from this CD. One thing that I did notice with the file in question is that it shows as a "Workspace" file. How can I retrieve the file??? Very important work document that I only have on CD. Can someone please help??
 
Hi Suzanne,
I have an excel workbook that I have saved on CD which I read & write to everyday.

First of all: Never read and write Office files to removable media. Floppies have
been renown in the past to cause trouble like you are experiencing now.

Always copy to harddisk, work in the HD file, save to HD and close, then copy back
to the removable media.

That being said:

Options to try and open a corrupt file

- Set calculation to manual
- open the file, but disable macros (assuming you've set macro security to medium:
Tools, Macro, security)
- As soon as you've clicked the disable macros button, press control-pageup or
control-pagedown, thus changing sheets.

If that does not work, try creating a link to the file:

='c:\my documents\[MyFileName.xls]Sheet1'!A1

and copy right and down. This at least gets you the worksheets values.

if you don't know the sheet names, enter this:

='C:\PathToFile\[MyFileName.xls]'!A1

and press enter

If XL (2000) is able to extract them, it will prompt you for a sheet name.

Sometimes the Excel viewer, Word or even Internet explorer (v5) enables you to open
the file and copy information out of it.

If the file is not protected, maybe you can open it with OpenOffice
(www.Openoffice.org).

Also, Excel XP can sometimes repair XL files with trouble.

Finally, sometimes a corrupt file that still can be opened,
can be cured using this method (XL2000 or up):

- Open the file
- Save-as filetype Webpage
- close the file
- Open the html file
- save-as normal Excel workbook.



Regards,

Jan Karel Pieterse
Excel MVP
www.jkp-ads.com
 
Back
Top