Now click ‘ Repair’ if you want to recover maximum data from a corrupt or inaccessible Excel workbook and restore it to a new Excel file.Select the file and then click on the arrow beside the ‘ Open’ button to choose the ‘Open and Repair…’ option.Navigate to File > Open and then navigate to the corrupt or damaged Excel file location.However, if it doesn’t start automatically, you can manually repair minor corruption error and restore the Excel file by following these steps: When MS Excel detects corruption, it starts ‘File Recovery Mode’ to repair the Excel workbook. If the Excel file you are trying to open or access is corrupt, MS Excel will display an error message. Repair and Restore Corrupt or Inaccessible Excel File However, this option works only if you had enabled and set up the ‘ Save AutoRecover information every X minutes’ option and enabled the ‘ Keep the last AutoRecovered version if I close without saving’ option.Īlso, this may not restore the most recent copy of your Excel file, but it will surely save your time that went into creating and editing the workbook. Once the file is open, click on File > Save As and save it to your desired location.Now look for the Excel file that you lost and then double-click on it to open and restore the Excel file.Scroll to the bottom and click on ‘Recover Unsaved Workbooks.’ This opens a File Explorer browser window.The Recover Unsaved Workbooks option allows you to restore the Excel file that you forgot to save before closing MS Excel or it stopped working.
Restore Lost or Unsaved Excel File via ‘Recover Unsaved Workbooks’ Option NOTE: Some of these methods work only if you had enabled or configured certain required settings or options before corruption or losing the Excel file. Solutions to Restore Excel Fileīelow we have discussed various solutions to repair, recover, and restore unsaved, lost, corrupt, or inaccessible Excel files with the help of MS Excel options and Excel repair software. In such cases, you are left with the option to repair the damaged or corrupt Excel file with the help of an Excel repair software, such as Stellar Repair for Excel. However, MS Excel comes with a recovery feature that allows users to recover or restore Excel files lost or corrupted when the MS Excel quits unexpectedly or computer crashes due to hardware or software-related issues.īut sometimes, the restored version of the Excel file may not contain all the data or changes you made recently. Excel (XLS/XLSX) file corruption is a common issue that may arise due to problems, such as abrupt system shutdown, system crash, malware or virus intrusion, unsupported add-in, etc.