Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!uwmacc!rick From: rick@uwmacc.UUCP (the absurdist) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Followup to corrupted Excel file problem. Message-ID: <2051@uwmacc.UUCP> Date: Tue, 8-Dec-87 11:23:52 EST Article-I.D.: uwmacc.2051 Posted: Tue Dec 8 11:23:52 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 13-Dec-87 11:42:34 EST References: <6993@ut-ngp.UUCP> Reply-To: rick@unix.macc.wisc.edu.UUCP (The Absurdist) Organization: UW-Madison Academic Computer Center Lines: 34 I recently had a user bring in "my only copy" of an Excel file that could no longer be read. A little work with some disk utilities showed that the problem was that the first sector had gone bad. I made a sector copy of the disk, getting a "legal" file that would start Excel. However, Excel immediately claimed that "This is not a saved Excel worksheet." Microsoft refuses to document their file formats (boo!). Lotus Corp. does (yeah!). It occured to me that the two were probably similar in intent, and that the Lotus 123 format keeps no real data in its header; instead it has all the settings for print ranges, graph types, etc. So I tried replacing the bad sector with the first sector of a good Excel worksheet of similar size. Voila! All the data came back. I advised the person to PRINT OUT their data, back the thing up, and then reset all their ranges. As far as I know, that worked fine. The Lotus 123 format is documented in a book by Lotus Corp., called "Lotus File Formats for 1-2-3, Symphony and Jazz." It's published by Addison-Wesley. Version 3 of Lotus will have a revised file format, and they are going to publish that one, too. If you're really worried about your data, keep it in .wks format, not Excel native format; you can preserve just about all the worksheet settings, and still decode it. On the other hand, keeping a set of BACKUPS together with a PAPER audit trail is better yet. ("No backup? Well, can you can reconstruct the data from the bills and receipts?" "Oh, no, we threw those all out." "AAAAUGGGGHH!") -- Rick Keir -- all the oysters have moved away -- UWisc - Madison "Watch the skies...."