Recently I have been thankful for a couple of Office features which help with damaged files. I think both of the following first appeared in Office XP. The first is extremely strange and was unknown to me until very recently.
On the “About Microsoft Excel” (under the help menu) there is a “Disabled Items” button. Why the hell it’s there I don’t know, I don’t think man will ever find out, but there it is none the less. It pops up a box of workbooks that Excel has “Disabled”, normally because they are causing Excel to crash. You can (re)enable them there too.
 
The next is a slightly more logical feature but still often overlooked. Sometimes a file corrupts and Excel won’t open it. From Excels’ Open Dialog, select the problem file and click the drop down arrow on the open button. Then click “Open and Repair”.
Still no joy? You might try opening your file with OpenOffice.org, which has a decent reputation for recovering damaged documents.
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