Recover Microsoft Excel Documents

It isn't as bad as it seems if you find you have lost Microsoft Excel XLS / XLSX worksheets. It's easier than you think to recover Excel files. The chances are that your work is still on your computer's hard drive. This page will explain how to do your own Excel recovery.

Recover data from a damaged workbook

If your workbook exists, but is corrupted or damaged, then you can try to recover it. Microsoft Excel 2002 and later versions have a built-in workbook recovery feature. Start Excel, then click on File, Open. Locate the file you want to recover, then click the arrow next to the Open button and select Open and Repair. When prompted to do so, click Repair.

If this does not work, and Excel cannot repair your workbook, then you may be able to extract the data from the workbook. Repeat the steps above, but click Extract Data instead of Repair. If you receive the message "The document file name caused a serious error the last time it was opened. Would you like to continue opening it?" click Yes.

If you can open the workbook in Excel then try saving it as a web page or in XML Speadsheet format, and then reloading it. Click on File, Save As, then in the Save as type: list, select Web page or XML Spreadsheet. Close the file, then open the file you just created. Click File, Save As, and in the Save as type: list select Microsoft Excel Workbook. Change the filename so as not to overwrite the original copy.

Finding lost Excel files

If you can't find your XLS worksheet at all then it might have been saved by mistake in a different location. Use the Windows Search tool to search your hard drive for the file. You can search by name, or look for a phrase that you know is in the document itself.

One of the most common reasons why XLS files are lost is that they are deleted accidentally. Don't forget the Recycle Bin! When you open the Recycle Bin, click on the Type column header to sort the file list by type. It's easier than looking through the whole list for a deleted Excel files.

Recover Excel files

If your Excel file is really lost, then it is still possible to recover it. Even if it has been accidentally overwritten by saving another file on top of it, copies of the original may still exist. However, there is no way to find them using standard Windows tools. You will need to use specialist data recovery software.

Click here for Excel recovery products

There would seem to be no shortage of data recovery products to choose from, but if your work is important it is best to choose a tool that has been designed specifically to recover Excel files. Excel recovery software can recognise the structures and "signatures" of XLS and XLSX files and is able to locate them where more general purpose tools may fail to do so. Even if only parts of the original file can be recovered, this is better than total loss of the data.

General purpose undelete data recovery software may successfully recover XLS files that were recently deleted, but they may fail to find files that would have been recoverable by other products. The more the computer is used, the less chance there is that your workbook can be recovered successfully. So for the best results, use a dedicated Excel recovery tool.

See a tutorial on how to recover lost Excel spreadsheets