Excel says my files are corrupted, but they are not

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Solution 1

Excel supports various formats including OpenOffice ods and OpenOffice supports even more formats. So try opening the file in OpenOffice then save the file as xlsx, xlsb, xls, mht, htm, ods, dif, dbf, slk, xlw, xml... and reopen it with Excel and see. Some other alternatives are Gnumeric and WPS office

If your file doesn't have any VBA (which probably doesn't because you can open and view it normally with OpenOffice) and you can sacrifice some formats then you can also save it as csv file which will least likely result in an error

If none of the above works then you have the last solution:

  • Creating a new spreadsheet in Excel
  • Open the each sheet of the file in OpenOffice, press Ctrl+A then press Ctrl+C
  • Switch to Excel, create a new sheet and press Ctrl+V
  • Finally copy any VBA code if necessary

Solution 2

Saving to binary (xlsb) solved a problem with some contents in my case. Seems like some text conversion goes wrong while saving to xml (xlsx).

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Jess Stone
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Jess Stone

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

  • Jess Stone
    Jess Stone over 1 year

    How can I fix my Excel files? Many of them show this error message:

    We found a problem with some content in . Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes.

    They open with Open Office without problems!

    The files have been created in Excel 2010, and saved on a NAS drive

    Error message

    NB: I must use Excel though. I tested with both Excel 2010 and 2013

    NB2: This question did not help, unfortunately

    • CLockeWork
      CLockeWork over 10 years
      What version of Excel are you using?
    • Ramhound
      Ramhound over 10 years
      After creatinga copy, does clicking YES, resolve the problem? If Excel is saying there is a problem with the files, there likely is a problem, its either a malformed cell that Excel does not understand. What program ( and its version ) created these files?
    • STTR
      STTR over 10 years
      Set Visual Basic for Applications in Office 2010/2013 installation?
    • Jess Stone
      Jess Stone over 10 years
      I tested both with Excel 2010 and 2013
    • Ramhound
      Ramhound over 10 years
      This sounds like the files were created with Open Office, which means if there is a bug in Open Office, a malformed cell could indeed cause trigger the corrupt flag in Excel.
    • week
      week over 10 years
      Or there could be a bug in MS Office. It's hard to say just from decribed behavior. You may save that file in xml-related file and use text editor to view, if there is something wrong with it's structure. Post your file somewhere and give us a link, if that's possible.
    • Jess Stone
      Jess Stone over 10 years
      the files have been created in Excel 2010, and saved on a NAS drive
    • KEK
      KEK about 7 years
      Old question but it was bumped so I'd like to point out you could hold down the CTRL key while right-clicking the file to open it in safe mode, and possibly be able to open it even though some data may look corrupted.
    • cybernard
      cybernard over 5 years
      Go under help and about. Do you have all the service packs and updates installed for office? Both those version had at least 3 service packs.
    • phuclv
      phuclv about 5 years
      you still didn't answer the does clicking YES, resolve the problem? question