How can I open an Excel file that Excel "does not recognize this file format"?

Anonymous2020-11-04T23:40:52Z

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Maybe it is Lotus 123?  They had the workpage setup years before MS branded it as theirs. (thus M$ stole it) which is common practice for them.
. Left click and open as a Word Document and take the check mark off that says "always open with this file type" because you do not know if it will work.
.  If it does open, then left click it and save as M$ Excel as another file on the desktop.  Now try opening the new file with Excel and see if it works.

It is a bit of JUGGLING & experimentation to figure out how to work it.

I went to the Microsoft store and downloaded "FreeFileViewer"  Maybe that will help you.?

D.E.B.S.2020-11-03T17:47:12Z

Open in Notepad.  Copy everything.  Paste into a blank excel workbook.  You may have to play with the columns and how the paste is delimited, but that often works.  If it's a pretty complex excel file you can forget about it.  

If you know the source of the file, go back to that program and do a save as excel.

keerok2020-11-03T15:02:36Z

Convert to excel format first (if that is possible).

Abigil2020-11-03T03:59:55Z

Change the excel to compatible mode to try.

Anonymous2020-11-03T03:53:31Z

You can open it in wordpad and try to figure out what kind of file it is.

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