Did Shakespeare use Excel?

[steveh]

Hi all

I have a workbook which up until now has worked fine but today when I make any changes I get the blue spinning wheel and eventually the crash message, when I reopen it shows that the workbook was created on January 1st 1601. There has been a lot of work gone into the workbook (with the lounge's help) and I don't want to lose it, is there any advice

a. should I try save as
b. should I copy each page into a new workbook
c. anything else?

Cheers

[HansV]

Do you have a recent backup? If so, you could go back to that.

Also: right-click the workbook in Windows Explorer, and select Properties from the context menu.
If there is a Previous Versions tab, activate that and see if older versions are available. If so, you could try opening those to see if they work OK.

[Rudi]

If all else fails and you don't have backups, you can try opening the workbook in Apache OpenOffice (using the spreadsheet app). I use this method to successfully open many corrupt xlsx workbooks and then save from OpenOffice as a standard xls. Once the recovered file is saved, I can open in Excel again. I don't want to get your hopes up, but if needed, give it a try; its certainly worth it IMHO with the success rate I have had using it.

[HansV]

Another option: the Open button in the File > Open dialog has a dropdown arrow. When you click this, extra options appear, among which Open and Repair. My experience with this option isn't great, but sometimes it works.
(If the result of Open and Repair looks promising, save the workbook under another name, otherwise don't save it at all. Make sure that you don't overwrite the problem workbook, for that would close off other ways to repair it)

[steveh]

Thanks to both of you

I rebooted my system again and the original seemed to have worked OK so I have now made 2 backups!!

Cheers

[Rudi]

Now why didn't I think of THAT!!

BTW:
Shakespear DID use spreadsheets!
It is said that Shakespeare was working on an Excel spreadsheet and created a formula that inspired one of his most famous lines: =OR(B2, NOT(B2))

[stuck]

Shakespear DID use spreadsheets!
It is said that Shakespeare was working on an Excel spreadsheet and created a formula that inspired one of his most famous lines: =OR(B2, NOT(B2))

Really? The general feeling in our office is that it's more likely that the inspiration behind the line was the decision he had to make on what type of pencil to use, "2B or..."

Ken