Betreft: Re: [AccessD] Linked Table - Excel Spreadsheet

Gary,

Some of those unprintable characters are probably the cell boundaries.
If they are then you could try saving as .txt or try importing into
Access.  If neither of those work, you could copy a row at a time as a
string and strip out the unprintable characters.

Charles Wortz
Software Development Division
Texas Education Agency
1701 N. Congress Ave
Austin, TX 78701-1494
512-463-9493
CWortz at tea.state.tx.us



-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Lockett [mailto:keysolns at lantic.net] 
Sent: Monday 2003 Aug 11 12:47
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: Betreft: Re: [AccessD] Linked Table - Excel Spreadsheet

When opening the file in Notepad or Wordpad, there are a number of
unprintable characters. Unfortunately the data is not produced in a nice
neat format that can easily be copied and pasted.

Gary

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wortz, Charles" <CWortz at tea.state.tx.us>
To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving"
<accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 2:44 PM
Subject: RE: Betreft: Re: [AccessD] Linked Table - Excel Spreadsheet


Gary,

Does the spreadsheet still have the .xls file extension or does it now
have the .doc file extension?  It is possible somebody opened and then
saved it in Word.  If so, then you can open it in Word and try saving it
in Excel.

If that's not it, then try opening the file in either Word or Notepad
and try copying the data to a clean Excel worksheet.  You should be able
to recover most of the data that way.

Charles Wortz
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday 2003 Aug 11 07:06
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject:Re: [AccessD] Linked Table - Excel Spreadsheet
Having reread my post, it is rather misleading. When I try opening the
spreadsheet with Excel, I am unable to open the file. It says "Unable to
read file".

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Lockett" <keysolns at lantic.net>
To: <AccessD at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 1:51 PM
Subject: [AccessD] Linked Table - Excel Spreadsheet


I have a customer who has a database with a table linking to an Excel
Spreadsheet. This morning (Monday morning blues) they are unable to
access the data. Access gives an error message saying that the external
table is not in the correct format. When I tried opening the spreadsheet
with Excel, the file is not in the correct format.

The customer says that the only problem they have had is running out of
space on the C: Drive - could this corrupt the Excel file?

Are there any utilities available to repair an Excel file? What steps do
I need to take to retrieve the data?

The customer promises to start taking backups from now on. I need to
recover their data. Can someone on this wonderful list help make me look
good in the customers eyes????

Gary Lockett
Key Solutions
Port Elizabeth
South Africa