Why You Need to Know How to Recover Excel Files

Many people the world over depend on electronic spreadsheets to maintain their personal or institutional records. One of the most widely used spreadsheet programs is Microsoft Excel. A sub-product of the Microsoft office franchise, Excel workbooks are common in homes, schools and small businesses. In this article, we are going to look at reasons why you need to know how to recover Excel workbooks.

Excel has succeeded in surpassing Lotus1-2-3 to become the industry standard for spreadsheets. This has largely been attributed to the fact that it belongs to the Microsoft Office group of software and is the go-to spreadsheet for users already accustomed to other programs in the franchise. Excel files created by versions earlier than Excel 2007 use the extension .xls ( short for Excel Binary Format) while Excel 2007 largely uses the Office Open XML format.

Like every other file type, Excel files are at risk of corruption. When an Excel file is corrupted, it will fail to open and in extreme cases you can lose the file entirely. You will either be forced to create a new file or recover it.

File recovery is however not as complicated as it was a decade ago. With a tool like DataNumen Excel Repair, anyone who can use a computer can recover Excel files. Here are some of the situations that would require you to recover your Excel files:

Wrong Filename Extension

The disparity between Excel 2007 and other versions is a major cause of Excel files corruption and loss. If you, for example, created a workbook on Excel 2007 and it is saved as a .xml file, it will not open in very outdated versions of Excel which only recognize .xls files. The solution here is just to change the filename extension.

System Issues

There are several system-related issues that could threaten the integrity of your Excel file. The most common problem is system crashes. If a system crash occurs while you are working on a spreadsheet in Excel, it is likely that the work will be lost the next time you start the system. Forced software updates in windows 10 also sometimes interrupt changes being made to a spreadsheet and in the process corrupt the whole workbook.

Malware Attacks

With internet usage currently at an all-time high and rising, malicious software programmers are working round the clock. Even with the best and latest antivirus software, it’s getting harder to protect your data from malware. You should therefore be careful not to open suspicious attachments from unfamiliar email addresses. Furthermore, avoid clicking random ads on the internet.

Hardware Failure

Running Excel 2007 on very old and slow hardware will definitely cause processing issues and corrupt the resulting workbook. Hard disks are also often to blame in the corruption of some Excel files. A faulty hard disk like one with bad sectors will constantly corrupt and lose all your files.

Unstable Power Supply

Power supply issues, such as outages and power surges, cause a sudden shutdown if you are using a desktop without a UPS power backup system. On restarting the system, the spreadsheet you were working on before the sudden shutdown will more often than not be corrupted. Excel workbooks are important and all possible measures should be taken to secure them. However, if you lose or corrupt them, you should know how to use the readily available recovery tools to repair them.