How to Repair Corrupted Excel Files on Mac or Windows

It is really a hassle to find your Excel files get corrupted due to software crash, system error, or some other unexpected accidents. Some of you may in the habit of backing up Excel  workbooks regularly, while others may not. When Microsoft Excel files get corrupted or damaged, how do you salvage your data?

If you are looking for methods to repair corrupted Excel files, here is the right place for. This post wraps up 4 easy ways to recover damaged or corrupted Microsoft Excel files, no matter you are using Mac or Windows computer.

4 Methods to Repair Corrupted Excel Files on Mac/Windows

Before we start, make sure you have made a copy for your Excel file.

Method 1: Use Excel Open and Repair Tool

Microsoft Office suite are built with auto repair feature. Usually, Excel will automatically recover a damaged file when you open it. If the automatic recovery mode doesn’t work, you can try to repair the corrupted file manually. Here are steps to make it:

1. Launch Microsoft Excel and choose Open from the File menu.
2. In the Open dialog box, find the Excel workbook and choose Open and Repair option form the dropdown list associated with the Open button.
3. If you see a popup window to ask you to choose Repair or Extract Data, click Repair.

Method 2: Save Excel Files as HTML Pages

If you can open a Excel file, but all contents in the Excel workbook are displayed as unreadable code, you can save the file as a HTML page with following steps:

1. Open the Excel file.
2. Click Save As from the File menu.
3. Choose Web Page from the “Save as type” list and click Save. Make sure Entire Workbook is selected.
4. Click Save.
5. In the save destination, right click the saved file and choose Open With > Microsoft Office Excel.

Method 3: Save Excel File as XML Spreadsheet

This is an alternative to method 2. You can also try to save the corrupted Excel fils as XML spreadsheet to see if it can repair the file.

1. Open the corrupted Excel file if you can.
2. Click Save As from the File menu.
3. Choose XML Spreadsheet from the “Save as type” list and click Save.
4. Click Save.
5. In the save destination, right click the saved XML spreadsheet and choose Open With > Microsoft Office Excel.
6. If it file is displayed correctly, save it as an Excel file.

Method 4: Use Stellar Phoenix Excel Repair Tool

There are also some third-party applications can help you repair damaged or corrupted Excel files. One of the Excel file recovery tools that you can choose is Stellar Phenix Excel Repair. It can be installed on both Windows and Mac computers and supports Microsoft 2016 and all earlier versions.

Stellar Phoenix Excel Repair – Repair Corrupted Excel Files

Here are some key features of Stellar Phoenix Excel Repair:

• Allows you to recover table, chart, chart sheet, cell comment, image, formula, sort and filter
• Supports repairing single as well as multiple XLS/XLSX files
• Preserves worksheet properties and cell formatting after repairing
• Repairs all Excel corruption errors