Excel specializes in letting you organize, edit and analyze data that can be arranged in lists or tables. Using spreadsheets, you can keep track of the DVDs in your personal movie collection or plan an itinerary for your next trip. However, the real power of Excel lies in its ability to crunch large stacks of numbers. Many small and large businesses and institutions use Excel to record financial data such as sales figures or yearly earnings and scientific data like medical charts or experimental observations. Once you enter the raw data, Excel has a wide array of computing and chart-making tools that will let you analyze the data as well as understand and present the results. In other words, Excel can be as simple or as sophisticated as you want it to be.
Very often, Excel files get damaged due to frequent software crashes, accidental system shutdowns, media corruption or virus corruption. When you try to access a corrupt Excel file you will be show the error message 'file cannot be accessed'. Excel is thus warning you that the file you are trying to open is damaged and does not open it. One quick solution is to use the 'Open and Repair' option. This will instruct Excel to carry out the necessary corrections, log them for your reference and then display the file. If the damage was minor, you may not lose any information.
You could also try running Excel in safe mode - this will allow Excel to run without VBA and Add-Ins. You could also try opening the file in Microsoft Word or WordPad. While you may lose all the formatting and formulas, you may still be able to recover the data.
An excellent alternative to all these retrieval methods is to use recovery software like
