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Written By Edwin Stark
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Updated on June 16th, 2022
(Resolved) “This File is Not in a Recognizable Format” an Excel 2003 Error
Many of us do encounter a message – “This file is not in a recognizable format” when we try to open our excel files!
This error is caused due to corrupt excel files saved in both .xls as well as .xlsx extensions.
It is a nightmare when your crucial Excel data becomes inaccessible that you have spent hours on creating and analyzing.
Excel is among the best software applications for making data grids and spreadsheets.
It is used in both homes and offices for making data reports, budgets, payrolls and many more. You can analyze huge your data with the help of pivot tables, graphs, formulas, and other features.
In this blog post, we will see how this error can be resolved and you can restore your excel files easily.
So to know more keep reading
Ways to Fix This Excel Error
If your Excel files are corrupted and you try to open those files, the program will automatically try to recover the data from the file via File Recovery.
If File Recovery mode fails or doesn’t work then you can try to restore the files by following the given steps-
Manual Methods
- Right-click on the “.xlsx” file of your choice.
- Choose the “Open With” option in the opened menu
- Click on “Default program” option.
- A dialog box labeled “Open With” will appear.
- In this dialog box, click on the “Browse” button
- Find the “Moc.exe” file (Microsoft Open XML Converter).
- Click on the “OK” button.
- Now you can easily Open the “.xlsx” files in MS Excel
If this method doesn’t work, you can go ahead with the next method.
Repairing Excel File with “Open and Repair” Method
Whenever the excel files are not opening, the File Recovery Feature of MS Excel starts on its own.
But, sometimes, this feature doesn’t work as always. You don’t need to worry and you can perform the Open and Repair method to recover lost Excel files. Follow the given steps
- On the File menu, choose “Open”.
- In the Open option, search for the corrupted Excel file in it.
- After finding the damaged Excel files, select the corrupt files and choose the Open and Repair option.
- Choosing the Repair option would help you to repair corrupt files as far as it is possible.
- If you want to extract formulas and values from the excel file if Repair option doesn’t work, you can use the Extract option.
If for some reason you are not able to bring back your Excel workbook by Open and Repair method, then you can go ahead with the below technique.
You may also read:
How To Recover Excel Files From USB/Pen Drive
How To Resolve MS Word/Excel Error “The File Is Corrupted And Cannot Be Opened”
With the help of Excel Recovery Tool
Damaged Excel data files can be restored easily with the help of this Excel Recovery Tool that you can download online. This Excel file recovery tool by Sysinfo Tools can easily restore all the readable contents of Excel such as Unicode characters, formulae, notes, texts, text formatting, graphs, tables, images, cell data, etc. Both the new and old versions XLSX and XLS extensions can be restored.
Plus the software has been designed with a free version which you can download from here.
To Sum up
Losing your MS Excel data can cause a lot of headache to the users. You can take some simple steps to get back corrupt Excel files.
Mentioned manual techniques are good and free as well but require a lot of technical knowledge. Whereas the Excel Recovery tool is easy to use and quite reliable.
So it is totally upon you to decide which technique to go for.
Hope you liked the article
About The Author:
Edwin Stark is a Technical Content Writer who specializes in writing about databases, e-mail recovery, and e-mail migration solutions. He loves researching and developing content that helps database administrators, organizations and novices to fix multiple problems.
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