Repair a Corrupted Excel File
Recover an Excel workbook that will not open, and pull out the text it contains even if the workbook itself cannot be rebuilt.
Reading the file…
How to use this tool
- Choose the damaged file. It is read inside this tab — nothing is sent anywhere.
- The whole file is scanned byte by byte for archive headers, ignoring the index that is usually the broken part.
- Each member found is decompressed on its own, so one damaged part cannot take the rest down with it.
- You get a report naming exactly what came back and what did not, a rebuilt file, and where we could read it, the text on its own.
Excel workbooks corrupt more often than Word documents because they are larger, written more frequently, and more likely to live on a network share that drops. A DOCX, XLSX, PPTX and ZIP are all the same thing underneath: a ZIP archive holding a set of XML files. A ZIP records every member twice — once in a header immediately before the member’s own bytes, and once in an index written at the very end of the file. That index is written last, so an interrupted download or a truncated attachment destroys it first, and it is also the only part most applications read. The contents are still sitting there; the map to them is gone. Recovery means ignoring the map, scanning the raw bytes for every member header, and rebuilding the index from what is actually there.
Repair a Corrupted Excel File — the specification
| Handles | .xlsx, .xlsm (Excel 2007 and later) |
|---|---|
| Also works on | .ods and other ZIP-based spreadsheets |
| Not supported | Old binary .xls — a different format entirely |
| Text rescue | Yes — cell strings from xl/sharedStrings.xml |
| Formulas | Recovered if their member survives; not reconstructed if it does not |
| Maximum input | 100 MB |
| Uploads | None |
Repair a Corrupted Excel File: what can go wrong
These are the failures that actually come up, in roughly the order they happen:
- The file is an old binary .xls. That is not a ZIP archive and this cannot read it.
- The workbook was still open elsewhere when it was copied. Close it everywhere and copy again before assuming damage.
- Only the sheet you need is damaged. The rebuild recovers members, not individual cells, so a damaged sheet member is lost whole.
- The numbers are wrong rather than missing. That is content damage, not container damage.
How it works
A DOCX, XLSX, PPTX and ZIP are all the same thing underneath: a ZIP archive holding a set of XML files. A ZIP records every member twice — once in a header immediately before the member’s own bytes, and once in an index written at the very end of the file. That index is written last, so an interrupted download or a truncated attachment destroys it first, and it is also the only part most applications read. The contents are still sitting there; the map to them is gone. Recovery means ignoring the map, scanning the raw bytes for every member header, and rebuilding the index from what is actually there.Who needs Repair a Corrupted Excel File
Anyone whose workbook will not open after a crash, a network drop, a failed sync, or a copy from a failing drive.
Repair a Corrupted Excel File — frequently asked questions
Will my formulas survive?
If the member holding that sheet survives, yes — formulas are stored as text inside the sheet XML and come back with it. If that member is lost, the formulas are lost with it. Nothing is reconstructed or guessed.
I only need the numbers, not the file
Then the text download is the fastest route. Excel keeps repeated cell text in a shared strings table, and we read it directly, so labels and text values often come back even when the workbook will not reopen.
Can you repair a .xls file?
No — the old binary format is not an archive. Try opening it in Excel through File — Open — the dropdown arrow next to Open — "Open and Repair", which is built for exactly that format.
What cannot be recovered?
Content that is no longer in the file. If a download stopped at 60%, the last 40% is absent and nothing can bring it back. If a disk fault overwrote part of the document with zeroes, that part fails its checksum and is reported as lost rather than quietly returned half-broken. Any tool claiming to fix any corrupted file is describing something that cannot be done.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is read inside your browser tab and the repair runs there. Nothing is transmitted, which is the main reason to use this rather than a service that asks you to upload a damaged work document or dissertation to a server you know nothing about.
Is this tool really free?
Yes. No account, no trial period, no watermark on the output and no cap on how many times you use it. The site is funded by advertising.
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Disclaimer. Published requirements change without notice. Confirm against the official source before you submit. Full disclaimer.