Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I have created a spreadsheet on 04 July 2019, last time I used it was 10 July 2019.
When I wanted to open the spreadsheet today (12 July 2019) I received a "ASCII" screen up, and when I pressed OK, it opened the spreadsheet in a word format.
The document was completely unreadable.
I then closed the document, without saving, and tried to reopen it again, and again it opened as a word document.
Once again I closed the file, and when I tried to open it back again I right clicked on the file. After a list of options showed, I asked it to "open with" Open Office Calc.
Since then the spreadsheet doesn't open up at all, not even as a word document.
Please help.

A file that opens as ### is damaged - possibly because of over-hasty power off of the computer before the internal buffers in the hard drive had written to disk.

You may be able to recover a previous version of the file - see [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete AOO temporary files for detailed instructions on how to

a) use Previous Versions (W7 and later) to recover previous versions of the file ;

b) recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it, or as it was when it was last saved with AutoRecovery;

c) find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located in, but which have since been deleted;

d) un-delete the temporary files AOO wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. This will recover your file as it was when you last opened or you last saved it.

Edit: Experience shows that you should not waste any time with y our existing file - it will have no usable content. Concentrate on the recovery methods outlined in the tutorial.