Word and Excel file problem...

[WARP MAN]

I dont know exactly how this happened, but here is what I have. I assume someone made a mistake and was trying to cover their tracks, and now I'm trying to sort it out for someone.

I have an EXCEL file that I am told contains many tabs and sheets of data.

The file wont open in EXCEL - says invalid format (it's an xls file).

I take out the xls extension and the file opens in WORD - badly formatted and only a selection of the data.

Now, what I expect someone has done is somehow export the data into word and, saved it and then renamed the file .xls to make it look like the original. I just dont know.

Is there anyway I can get the original back in EXCEL? I assume it's all there, but again, I dont know.

Thanks for the help.

[QWERTY]

You're making too many assumptions...

If you take any working excel file and rename the extension of .DOC then open it, it will of course be badly formatted because it's not a real word doc. Either way, that doesn't prove anything.

The only thing I see is a corrupt excel file. Go to the excel help menu and type "Repairing corrupted files in Excel" as the help topic.

[PhilEnfield]

lol .... yeah there seems to be more you dont know, than do know about the origins of this file.

It may have been created on a different package altogether, like Lotus.

If I were you, I would try to find out from, whoever gave you the file .... what it is/was ;)

[Van Nugent]

The worksheet might also be created by a newer Office version so when you tried to open it with an older version, the format of the file was not recognized.