How to Recover a Corrupted Excel Workbook That Won't Open

Hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and click the Microsoft Excel shortcut icon. Confirm that you want to start the application in Safe Mode when prompted.

Click on File in the top-left corner, select Open, and then click Browse to open the file explorer dialog.

Locate and single-click your corrupted workbook. Instead of clicking the main Open button, click the small drop-down arrow next to it and select Open and Repair.

In the dialog box that appears, click Repair to recover as much of your work as possible. If a previous repair attempt failed, repeat the process and choose Extract Data instead.

Open Microsoft Excel normally, click on File, and select Blank workbook.

In cell A1 of the new workbook, type a formula that points to the damaged file. For example, type ='C:\YourFolder\[CorruptedFile.xlsx]Sheet1'!A1 (replace the path and filename with your actual file details).

Press Enter. If Excel cannot automatically resolve the path, an Update Values dialog box will appear. Browse to your corrupted workbook, select it, and click OK.

Select cell A1 in your new workbook. Click and drag the small square (fill handle) in the bottom-right corner of the cell across the columns and down the rows to pull the remaining data from the corrupted file.

Open your web browser and sign in to your OneDrive account where the corrupted Excel file is stored.

Navigate to the specific folder containing the corrupted workbook.

Right-click on the Excel file and select Version history from the context menu.

Browse the list of previous saved versions. Click the three vertical dots next to the most recent working version before the corruption occurred, and select Restore.