Repair a corrupted Excel file online

Why it happens

• Downloads, attachments and syncs that stop part-way.
• Workbooks generated by scripts, exports and AI tools that break the format's rules.
• Saves interrupted by a crash, a full disk or a removed USB stick.
• Old .xls files whose internal filesystem is damaged.

Try these first, they're free

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 3In Excel, choose File › Open, select the file, click the arrow next to Open and choose Open and Repair.

How we fix it

We find exactly which part is broken, repair it, check the result against Microsoft's Open XML validator and show you the workbook before you download. Old .xls files come back as .xlsx.

On 384 damaged Office files, we recovered 81% of the content; Office's own repair recovered 53%. See the benchmark.

Other messages

• Excel: “We found a problem with some content”
• Excel cannot open the file because the format or extension is not valid
• Excel: “The file format and extension don't match”
• Excel found unreadable content