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I use Office 2000 with Win 98 in a standalone PC without any LAN connection. When I open an Excel file (Label.xls) from My Documents folder, I get the following error message: "Label.xls cannot be accessed. The file may be read only or you are trying to access a read only location or the server the document is stored on may not be responding. Retry or Cancel." The same happens with a few other Excel files. Please suggest a solution.

R. Ramesh

Usually, if a file does not open, or causes problems to the application when it is opened, that file may be a corrupted one. Your Excel file could be corrupt. The following is preliminary information that is provided by Microsoft Knowledge Base Article (Q265103) to explain the error message that you have been receiving.

You are saving from a computer running either Windows NT 4.0 Workstation or Windows NT 4.0 Server or you are opening and saving an Excel workbook directly to a network share on a computer running Windows NT 4.0 Server or you are running Inoculan for Windows NT 4.0 from Computer Associates or Inoculan is set to "Monitor Outgoing Files" or "Monitor Both Directions". If you have installed Inoculan software, there is an update available from Computer Associates at the following URL: http://support.cai.com/techbases/ilnt/NILNT085.html.

The methods for recovering data in a corrupted Microsoft Excel file are as follows:This error message may appear when the file is read only, so please check the properties of that file. Close the Excel application and reopen the file again. If this doesn't work, please reboot the machine and try to open the file again. If this doesn't work either, delete the contents of your c:\windows\temp directory and reboot the system and try again. Open the file on a different machine. Copy the file locally if you're on a network; do the reverse if the file is local.

Also, there could be a possible access problem in the hard disk. So please check for errors on your hard disk. To do this, click start -{gt} Programs

-{gt} Accessories -{gt} System Tools -{gt} ScanDisk and Click the drive you want to examine for errors. Click "Thorough" and check "Automatically fix errors". Click Start to begin the scan. If there are no issues on hard disk, open Excel in safe mode. Starting Excel in safe mode brings up Excel without macros and without addins. To start it in safe mode, please use the "/s" switch e.g. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\excel.exe" /s and see if it helps.

Another important aspect is to update your virus definition files to the latest one. Make sure your macro heuristics scanning option is turned on. Try to save the corrupted file in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) format and use external references to link to the corrupted file. If you can open the corrupted file, then save it in the SYLK format. Please use the "Revert To Saved Document" command if possible. If a chart is linked to the corrupted file, use a macro to extract the data or Use the Microsoft Excel File Recovery Macro. If you have the Microsoft Excel converter installed, you may be able to open your Microsoft Excel workbook in Microsoft Word. You may rename your Excel file (xls extension) to doc file and try to open it in Microsoft Word or Wordpad, see if it opens in Microsoft Excel Viewer. You may download the Microsoft Excel viewer at the following URL:

http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/xlviewer.aspx (3813kb size). It's better to open the corrupted file in newer versions of Microsoft Excel such as Excel 2002 (Office XP) or Excel 2003 that have built-in corruption recovery functionality. For more information, please refer to "Methods for recovering data from damaged Excel 2000 workbooks" Microsoft Knowledge Base Article — Q179871 at the following URL:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;179871 and

http://www.s2services.com/excel.htm

Some third-party data recovery software is also available to repair Excel files. ExcelFix(Free trial) can be downloaded at http://www.cimaware.com/main/download/index.php or ExcelRecovery 3.0 (Free trial) download at URL http://www.officerecovery.com/excel/index.htm.

Solution by M. Sampath

Please e-mail us at eworld@thehindu.co.in if you have queries on computer usage or if you find an interesting way of using a computer.

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