Get rid of "The file is corrupt and cannot be opened" in Excel

Quick tip: learn how to access a corrupt xls. file in Excel

Usually when upgrading you expect nothing but improvements. So it can be really disappointing when after moving to Excel 2010 you have no chance to access your .xls file created in the application version 2003 and earlier. You understand what I'm talking about if you ever encountered "The file is corrupt and cannot be opened" error in Excel 2010 and later. Still think you can't open it? Actually you can!
Excel message: The file is corrupt and cannot be opened in Excel 2010

How to open a corrupt xls. file in Excel 2010 - 365

Try the following steps to see how your precious .xls data appear in Excel 2010 and later:

  1. Open Excel.
  2. Click on File -> Options.
  3. Select Trust Center and press the Trust center settings button.
    Excel: Trust center settings
  4. Pick Protected view.
    Trust center - Protected view
  5. Uncheck all the options under Protected View and confirm by pressing OK.
  6. Restart Excel and try to open the broken Excel documents.

Note. For safety reasons, you should save your document with new Office format like .xlsx. You can do it this way: File > Options -> Trust Center -> Trust Center settings -> Protected View.
Check all the options again under Protected View, click OK and restart Excel.

This will set the security options back. Sure, you don't want to open any file unsafely.

That's it. Hope it will work for you and your documents :).

Thanks and see you!

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390 comments

  1. thank you so much! it is working now.

  2. Thanks... This helped me a lot

  3. Thank you so much!

  4. thank you!

  5. Worked PERFECTLY! Thanks a million!!!

  6. its working..thanks lot

  7. Appreciated, it really works.

  8. Thank you so much for this tip. Saved me from agony.

  9. Thank you very much it helped me too

  10. Thanks for that insight it has worked well for me, thanks

  11. Thanks so much worked just great this got me nuts for almost a year, also it always happen to me if the file was coming from Italy then it wont open now we all good to go thanks so much again .

  12. Perfect, Thank you

  13. Thank you! This has been driving me nuts for the past week :)

  14. did not work ..

  15. This worked for me perfectly and save tons of my time and frustration. Thanks!

  16. Thank you! Was having this issue for a while. Resorted to opening files in Google Sheets then copying into Excel. Wasn't great. Your solution works a treat :)

  17. THANK YOU, so much! I had a spreadsheet logging 20 years' worth of irreplaceable data that suddenly gave me this error message - following your steps fixed it perfectly! THANK YOU!!!

  18. didn't work on server 2012r2 office 2010

  19. Thank you very much. It worked perfectly.

  20. thanx it helped

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