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xlsx corrupt file, password protected, can't open...need help

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Shades:
Try reading the file with a different Office suite, for example LibreOffice. From personal experience, and YMMV, I can tell you that I have received on several occasions MSoffice document(s) that were unreadable by MSOffice, but LibreOffice could open them just fine. Save the document again and it would open up in MSOffice as well. For these events (and PDF creation) I have a portable version of LibreOffice on my system. Always.

Carol Haynes:
Don't think LibreOffice and OpenOffice can read XLSX ?

How about using recovery software on the USB stick?

Shades:
The recent versions of LibreOffice do read the .xlsx format. Just verified that with my portable LibreOffice 3.3. As far as I know the latest portable build available is version 3.5. Granted, it doesn't go fast, but that doesn't rule it out as a salvage option now, is it?

Carol Haynes:
Good to know - I don't use LibreOffice on a daily basis but I didn't think that was there last time I looked. Good to see it is developing.

OpenOffice seems pretty dead (been at 3.3 for a long time).

40hz:
The recent versions of LibreOffice do read the .xlsx format. Just verified that with my portable LibreOffice 3.3. As far as I know the latest portable build available is version 3.5. Granted, it doesn't go fast, but that doesn't rule it out as a salvage option now, is it?
-Shades (March 24, 2012, 07:10 AM)
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I've had luck doing that myself.  :Thmbsup:

I'm guessing that Libre just ignores everything it can't parse and loads as much as it can. Which is fine if your primary goal is to recover data.

Most of the problems I've run into with Excel file corruption revolved around formatting or macros getting pooched. At which point Excel refused to do anything with the file. However, the underlying data was usually ok. Worst case was the table got truncated. But even so, any partial recovery is better than a total loss unless you enjoy typing.

Popping the Libre portable on a keyring is a smart idea. I've got it on my "field" key. Having a familiar wordprocessor or spreadsheet handy no matter where I went was always handy. And the ability to read a grumpy Office file is always a plus.

 8)

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