We have 3 computers networked. I saved recovered files through the network in a file folder on another computer. Now when I go to access them there seems to be multiple numbered copies. i.e.: York; York_1, York_2; York_3; York_4; etc. When I go to open one I get the following note:
The file you are trying to open, 'York.xls' is in a different format than specified by the file extension. Verify that the file is not
corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now?
If I proceed what opens up if gobbly goop with no useable information.
We have 3 computers networked. I saved recovered files through the network in a file folder on another computer. Now when I go to access them there seems to be multiple numbered copies. i.e.: York; York_1, York_2; York_3; York_4; etc. When I go to open one I get the following note:
The file you are trying to open, 'York.xls' is in a different format than specified by the file extension. Verify that the file is not
corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now?
If I proceed what opens up if gobbly goop with no useable information.
What have I done wrong and/or how can I fix it?
It seems that for some reason the restore added an extra letter to the xls and doc files. They are now xlsm and docm. My only choices for saving them without opening them appears to be xlsm, xlsx, and xlsb for Excel and docm or docx for Word. I have Office 2007 and upgraded to Windows 7 in December of 2009. How do I change the file names to a format that I can open?
With some files, the extension can be simply changed manually by deleting the current one from the end of the filename and inserting the new one, without doing any damage, but other files would probably be corrupted by doing that.
And I've no personal experience whatsoever with Excel files.
I would suggest making copies of some of them to experiment with, and try simply changing the file extension to what you know should be the correct one. If it doesn't work, you haven't lost anything.
Of course the recovered files themselves may not be 100%.
Try my suggestion, and in the meantime there are one or two of the other guys who are more knowledgeable than me on the technicalities of file recovery, and they may have some experience of Excel files.
Sorry I can't give you anything better, but I don't want to give you bad advice.
Multiple numbered files can be created when you recover the same named file (i.e. York.xls) to the same folder multiple times.
Docm is a valid extension for Office 2007 (it's a document containing a macro) and can be opened by Word 2007. Possibly the others are the same for Excel 2007.
If you open a document and it appears to be gibberish then maybe when was recovered is gibberish. Recuva will recover the data from the clusters listed in the file record, no matter whether the data is valid or not. If you get an opening warning then possibly the file signature has been corrupted, and the rest of the data too.