I've got an excel document that was accidentally saved with a ".doc" extention so Windows thinks it's a Word document. If I open it in Word, nothing but gibberish shows up. If I right click and chose "open with..." and select Excel, the document opens completely blank. I know the original information is in the file because it's 12 KB in size. Nonetheless, it's blank when I open it in Excel. I also tried renaming the file with a ".xls" extention but that didn't help. I need the contents of that file. Any suggestions?

open excel and see if it might be in history. try to open the history file and then save with a valid name. best of luck Frank :

Was it originally saved as an xls file and then Saved As a doc? If so, the original xls still exits. I'm curious though how the file was saved as a doc from within Excel, as that option is not available in the Save as Type box. Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

No, opening it from the history list does not help. It was saved as a doc because the person saving it manually typed ".doc" at the end.

A word doc is 23k with no data. A excel file is 13.5k with no data. Try renaming the .doc to .xls and see what you get when you open it. Wasn't much data so not sure why wasting time on this. More effective to recreate and save properly. Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

"It was saved as a doc because the person saving it manually typed ".doc" at the end." If that's true, renaming it to the proper extension should work. Are you sure she saved it as an xls file and then renamed it? Why the heck would she do that? Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

"It was saved as a doc because the person saving it manually typed ".doc" at the end." At what point? When doing the Save As? As I said, saving as a doc is not an option in Excel. If the filename was blahblah.doc.xls (extension default when saving in Excel), then the file would still be an xls file. Life is more painless for those who are brainless.