Unreadable .exl files

Recuva
1

Hi,

My computer disk was completely wiped by a reinstall of Windows 10. I recovered some Excel files, but when I tried to open them, they were not readable - contained strings of gibberish. Have I missed a step somewhere to convert them? I did a search through the forums and found some similar cases years ago, but there were no replies.

2

where did the .EXL file come from, that's not an Excel format.

you don't mean .EXE ?

usual Excel extensions are .XLS (pre Office 2007) or .XLSX (2007 and later).

what was your recovery process? Piriform's Recuva program?