My important Excel file says it is corrupted and will not open. I have months of data in there. Can I recover it?
Excel has a built-in repair tool that works in most cases. Open Excel, click File, then Open, then Browse to your file. Before clicking Open, click the small arrow next to the Open button and select Open and Repair. Choose Repair first. If that fails, try Extract Data which pulls out the values and formulas without formatting. If the built-in repair does not work, check for a recovery file: go to File, Info, Manage Workbook, and look for Recover Unsaved Workbooks. Excel also saves temporary backup files in C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles. Another option is to open the file in Google Sheets — upload it to Google Drive and try opening it there, as Google Sheets can sometimes read files that Excel cannot. If the file is on OneDrive or SharePoint, right-click it, select Version History, and restore an earlier version from before the corruption occurred. For critical business data, professional file recovery services can repair corrupted XLSX files for about 50 to 200 dollars.
