Are MS Works corrupt files recoverable?

[Neil]

Most of my Works files are stored on an external USB drive. Yesterday, while working with other files, my XP systems explorer stopped responding and I had to reboot. Well, today I discovered that a least two of my Works file are corrupt. Most (maybe all) the other files I've tried to open are OK, but these two will not open. The lost files are spreadsheets with some of my business data in them. When I try to open the files, Works asks "open as?", and if I choose spreadsheet it opens but my data is not there.

Is there any hope of recovering the data in these files? System restore didn't do it, because the external drive was not included in system restore. Any suggestions are welcome, except of course reminding me of the need for a better backup system. That much I am all too well aware of already.

[dsvochak]

It appears the best chance of recovery is to try opening the files with Excel:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/271074

[Neil]

Yeah, I saw that solution on Microsoft support site, but my version of Works is too old and doesn't use .xls file format, so no go with Excel.

I did try opening the file with notepad and I don't really know what I'm looking for. But, I saw reference to some of the data I would expect to see in the file, but there was also reference to some other file names that are not a part of the spreadsheet. Like some pictures that I was moving around from one folder to another a little while before the system hung. Those photos are still intact in the folders that I put them in, but there names were mixed in with info from my spreadsheets. And not much of the spreadsheet data is identifiable.

Tried Recuva (and some other file recovery software) also, and it said the file is "Unrecoverable - This file is overwritten with system volume information".

I was thinking that I had made a backup of this file recently. Not as in days ago, but maybe weeks ago. Well, I finally found the backup file. It was in February! Over eight months of data lost!

Looks like I'm going to be rebuilding a spreadsheet from the ground up. Unless someone has other suggestions.

[killer]

Try using 'Open Office' which can be downloaded free of charge.

[Neil]

Thanks for the suggestion killer, but I already tried OO yesterday, and it's a no go there also.

[RealBlackStuff]

Try this: http://recovery-for-works.software.informer.com/

[Neil]

Thanks RBS, I didn't know about Recovery-for-Works. The web-site says it's for Works Version 5 and up, which IIRC uses the Excel file system. The file in question was created with Works version 4.5, so I didn't have much hope, since it uses .wks file system, but downloaded the "Recovery" program and gave it a try. It scanned the file and then reported "no data to recover was found".

I'm going off in search of an older version that might be compatible with the version of Works that I'm using. But I'm afraid that even then, the file is too corrupt to recover.