Microsoft Excel 2007 - File error: data may have been lost

[KiingDavid]

Hi, my name is David and I have the following error when opening a certain excel file.

file error: data may have been lost

​

This file is accessed, altered on a daily basis but suddenly yesterday morning I received the above error when trying to open the file. Prior to the attempt to open the file, the computer was acting very slow so it was restarted many times, including one ctrl+alt+del forced shut down. Also, I cleared the internal dust build up with an air duster (those pressured air cans with the straw nozzle).

I am assuming the error started after one of these two incidents. However, no other files on the computer seem to be damaged and work in order.

Is there any way to recover the lost data?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Upon opening damaged file multiple times, I now get an error saying circular reference warning. Indeed there seems to be rows that have been moved or changed that created a loop in formulas as everything was fine prior to the error messages. I know this is NOT the orginal problem since cells that I know for certain that did not have a formula (such as titles, headings, manually input data) all show a #VALUE! value.

There were also no program updates installed. I have also unsecessfully tried a variety of excel "fix" programs.

 

[strollin]

I doubt if you can repair that file. Do you keep backups? If not, you just learned why backups are important. I don't mean to make light of your problem but I think most reading this forum have been burned at one time or another and learned the hard way how important it is to backup your data.