Excel Repair: 6 Ways to Repair Corrupted Excel Files Efficiently

The Excel files may encounter corrupted problems accidentally, such as Excel files running slow, Excel shows not enough memory or excel stuck at opening file 0%, etc. But don't worry, here will provide some solutions for you.These issues often occur when an Excel file gets damaged, but don’t worry, here we will provide some solutions for you on how to repair Excel files. 

In this article

01 Part 1: 6 Ways to Repair Damaged and Corrupt Excel Files Manually

02 Part 2: How to Recover Corrupted Excel Files Online for Free?

03 Part 3: What Causes the Corruption of Excel Documents?

04 Part 4: Tips to Avoid Problems with Excel Documents

Part 1: 6 Smart Ways to Repair Damaged and Corrupt Excel Files

Don't worry when your Excel files get damaged or corrupted, let’s learn how to fix them by applying these smart solutions:

Fix 1: Use MS Excel’s Native Repairing Feature

To make it easier for us to fix all kinds of minor issues with our Office documents, Microsoft has come up with an inbuilt repairing solution. Therefore, if your XLS or XLSX files are only mildly damaged, you can simply repair corrupted XLS files with the native feature -- Excel's Open and Repair function.

To repair Excel file that has corrupted, you can just launch the MS Excel application and go to its Menu > File > Open feature. You can now simply locate and select the corrupted Excel document saved on your system.

Now, instead of loading it in the standard way on Excel, you can click on the dropdown button adjacent to the Open feature. From here, you can select the "Open and Repair" feature instead and click "Repair" to recover damaged XLS file as soon as possbile, or click "Extract Data" to recover the values from the corrupted Excel file if the repairing procedure fails.

Fix 2: Fix Corrupted Excel File by Changing Calculation Settings

When you're unable to access a corrupted Excel workbook because it isn't open, consider opening it with automatic calculations turned off. Here's how you can alter the calculation settings in Excel to potentially access your file:

Step 1: Open a new workbook in Excel, Click on "File" in the upper-left corner, then select "Options".

Step 2: In the "Options" dialog, click on the "Formulas" tab. Under "Workbook Calculation", choose "Manual" to disable automatic processing.

Step 3: Click "Ok" to apply the changes and close the dialog, then head back to "File" > "Open", find your corrupted XLS workbook, and attempt to open it.

Note:Don't forget change calculation settings back, choose "Automatic" instead of "Manual" in "Calculation options", this action ensures that Excel will continue to automatically calculate functions and formulas in your other documents.

Fix 3: Remove Unwanted Add-ins from MS Excel

It has been observed that the presence of any unreliable add-in in MS Office can also cause all kinds of unwanted issues with it. The best way for damaged and corrupt Excel XLS file repair due to any app-related issue is by removing these add-ins.

To troubleshoot the issue, you can just launch MS Excel and go to its Menu > File > Options. As the dedicated window for Excel Options is launched, go to the Add-ins section from the sidebar.

From here, you can select any add-in that you want to remove and click on the “Actions” feature from the bottom panel to get rid of it. You can also go to the “Manage Add-ins” option here to directly uninstall any add-in on Excel.

Fix 4: Use the "AutoRecover" Feature to Recover A Temporary Save

Like other Microsoft Office products, Excel automatically saves a recovered version of a file by its "AutoRecover" feature, the AutoRecover feature saves an Excel worksheet to a temporary location after a certain time interval. Therefore, you can recover corrupt Excel file by recovering its partial or complete version through the AutoRecover feature.

Step 1: Open a Blank workbook in Excel and go to "File" and click "Options".

Step 2: In the new window, click "Save" and copy the "AutoRecover file location".

Step 3: Paste the copied AutoRecover file location after opening a File Explorer window, then press Enter.

Step 4: All of the auto-saved excel files will be displayed, just choose and recover the file that you want to recover.

Fix 5: Scan Your Corrupt XLS File with An Antivirus

As I have listed above, your Excel file can get corrupt after being infected by any virus or malware. Therefore, you can repair damaged and corrupt Excel XLS files by simply scanning them with a security application.

To implement this fix, you can just select the Excel file, right-click, and choose to scan it with any reliable antivirus application. Even if you don’t have any anti-malware tool installed, you can still scan the file with Microsoft Defender, which is the inbuilt security application in Windows.

Once the scan has been completed, you can launch MS Excel and try loading the corrupt file.

Fix 6: Run the MS Office Diagnostics on Windows

This is another smart technique that you can implement to fix these occurring issues with a corrupt Excel application instead. Apart from being a corrupt document, chances are that your installed MS Office Suite can also be corrupted.

Therefore, to repair damaged and corrupted Excel files, you can just launch Control Panel and go to its Programs & Features options. From here, you can just find and select the MS Office application and click on the “Manage” or “Change” button.

This will display all kinds of operations that you can perform on MS Office. You can just click on the “Repair” feature and commence the process to fix the installed MS Office Suite.

From the provided options, you can choose to perform a “Quick Repair” on the MS Office Suite. Now, you can just follow a simple click-through process to fix any issue with MS Office.

After completing the process, you can restart MS Excel on your system and check if it correctly loads the XLS file or not.If the file is still not accessible, you can consider using repair Excel file online free tools to restore it. 

Part 2: How to Recover Corrupted Excel Files Online for Free?

Repair and Recover Corrupted Excel Files Online for Free

In case there is a more severe issue with your Excel files, then you can repair them using Wondershare Repairit – Online File Repair. It is a user-friendly application that can repair multiple Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files by following a simple clickthrough process.

Repairit – Online File Repair supports you to repair corrupted Excel files online by just uploading the files in a quick and effective way. You can repair your Excel files that are damaged under every possible scenario with Wondershare Repairit. After completing its processing, this software will let you preview the results and export your Excel files to any preferred location.

Wondershare Repairit - File Repair

Try It Free Try It Free

Security Verified. Over 7,302,189 people have downloaded it.

• Repair damaged Excel files with all levels of corruption, including blank files, files not opening, unrecognizable format, unreadable content, files layout changed, etc.

• Repairs all kinds of data stored in damaged excel files such as tables, charts, formulas, comments, images, etc.

• Support all formats of Excel files: XLSX/XLSM/XLTX/XLTM/XLS

• Perfectly repair corrupted files with a very high success rate, without modifying the original file.

• Except Excel, Repairit also supports all formats of PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Zip, and Adobe files.

• No limit to the number and size of the repairable files.

• Support Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista, Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019/2022, and macOS 10.10~macOS 13.

The following are detailed step-by-step guides for Excel corrupted file repair.

Step 1: Load the Damaged Excel Files on Repairit – File Repair

To fix corrupt Excel file, you can just launch Wondershare Repairit on your system and go to its Other Types Repair> File Repair feature from its sidebar. You can now click on the “Add” button to simply locate and load any corrupt Excel file on the application.

Step 2: Repair the Loaded Excel Documents on Repairit

Once your corrupt Excel files are loaded, you can check their details on the side (like their size and location) and click on the “Repair” button to start the process.

After that, you can just sit back and wait for a while as the application would repair damaged and corrupt Excel files. You can check the progress of the Excel file repair process on the application.

Step 3: Preview the Results and Export your Excel Files

After the repairing process has been completed, Wondershare Repairit will let you know. You can now just click on the “Preview” button to check its data repairing results.

Here, on the native interface of Repairit, you can check if the loaded Excel document has been repaired by getting its preview.

That’s it! If you are satisfied with the results, then you can just click on the “Save” button adjacent to the file’s details. This will let you export your repaired Excel files from Repairit to any secure location on your system.

Here is a video tutorial guide to help you better understand how to repair corrupted Excel files.

Part 3: What Causes the Corruption of Excel Documents?

What causes Excel file corrupted? If you want to repair damaged and corrupt Excel files, then you should first try to diagnose what could have caused this issue in the first place.

Part 4: Tips to Avoid Problems with Excel Documents

As you can see, it is quite easy to repair damaged and corrupt Excel files with the right tools. Though, if you want to avoid facing such scenarios altogether, then you can consider following these tips:

Make sure that you always follow proper techniques while handling your Excel files. For instance, you should avoid shutting down or restarting your system when an Excel document is being processed.

Apart from that, consider installing a reliable anti-malware tool on your system and scan your Excel documents or their storage units regularly.

You should also avoid connecting your computers to a public network or your USB drives to a public computer as they can easily harm your files.

If you are installing any plugin or add-in to your MS Excel application, then make sure it is from a trusted publisher.

Lastly, avoid any forceful conversion of your Excel documents, and don’t take unwanted actions that can cause logical issues with your XLS files.

Most importantly, always consider taking a backup of your important Excel documents so that you can easily recover them (in case of data corruption).

Conclusion!

This brings us to the end of this extensive guide on how to repair damaged and corrupt Excel files in different ways. As you can see, I have come up with all kinds of native and third-party solutions that you can easily follow to repair corrupt, damaged, and inaccessible Excel documents on your system.

Besides that, you can also follow the above-listed suggestions to avoid these Excel-related issues in the coming days and keep your data safe.