Excel · .xlsx
Excel · .xlsxExcel: “We found a problem with some content”
We found a problem with some content in 'Budget 2026.xlsx'. Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes.
The workbook opened, but one of the XML parts inside it is not what Excel expects. Clicking Yes lets Excel throw away whatever it cannot read, and it does not always say what that was.
Fix it now, free
Drop the file here. We show you what is wrong and the repaired file before you download it. Nothing is stored.
.xlsx .docx .pptx .xls .doc .ppt, up to 50 MB
Why it happens
- A download, email attachment or sync that stopped part-way, cutting the last part of the file off.
- A program or script that wrote the workbook (a report generator, an export, an AI tool) and broke a rule of the file format: a duplicate sheet name, a formula Excel cannot parse, a style that does not exist.
- Excel or the computer stopping in the middle of a save.
Try these first, they're free
- 1If the file came from email or the web, right-click it, choose Properties, tick Unblock and press OK. Windows blocks downloaded files, and Excel then refuses to open them in ways that look like damage.
- 2Check the file's size. A file of 0 KB holds nothing at all: no repair can bring it back, so look for another copy (the sender, OneDrive version history, a backup).
- 3In Excel, choose File › Open, select the file, click the arrow next to Open and choose Open and Repair.
How we fix it
Usually only one part is wrong, often by a few characters. We find it, repair that part, keep everything else exactly as it was, and show you the result before you download it.
On 384 damaged Office files, we recovered 81% of the content; Office's own repair recovered 53%. See the benchmark.