Recovering Macros from Corrupted Workbooks

Devarajan ran into a situation where a workbook became corrupted, but he wanted to recover the macro module that was associated with the workbook. (The macros represented quite a bit of development time.) Devarajan wondered how the module could be recovered.

The answer depends, in large part, on how corrupted the workbook really is and where the corruption is located within the workbook. Much has been written about how to recover corrupted workbooks; the following resources will be of interest in this regard:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/7abfc44d-e9bf-4896-8899-bd10ef4d61ab
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/153a45f4-6cab-44b1-93ca-801ddcd4ea53
https://jkp-ads.com/articles/corruptfiles.asp

These pages refer specifically to recovering data, not to recovering the macros in a module associated with a workbook. One thing that you might try in order to get your macros is the following:

1. Open Excel, but not the problem workbook.
2. Set the calculation mode to manual (Formulas tab | Calculation group | Calculation Options | Manual).
3. Set the security setting to High (Developer tab | Code group | Macro Security | Macro Settings | Disable All Macros without Notification).
4. Open the troublesome workbook. If it opens successfully, you should see a notice that the macros were disabled. (If the workbook doesn't open, then you might as well shut Excel down; this series of steps won't work.)
5. Press Alt+F11 to display the VBA Editor.
6. In the Project Explorer, locate the module you want to save.
7. Right-click the module name and choose Export File.
8. Provide a name and location of where to save the module.
9. Close the VBA Editor and get out of Excel.
10. With the module saved in its own file, you can now import it into another workbook, as desired.

Another way to attempt recovery is to use OpenOffice, a free alternative to Microsoft Office. The spreadsheet program in OpenOffice will open Excel files, and it isn't as sensitive to some corruption issues.

Still another approach is to use a tool that will specifically extract macros from a workbook. Doing this can get pretty techie, but if you are so inclined, you may find the discussion and tools at this site of interest:

https://www.decalage.info/vba_tools

If this still doesn't work, try using a low-level file manipulation tool that allow you to read files sector by sector from a disk, and then allow you to see the information in each sector. With most types of files this won't be very helpful. In fact, it wouldn't help you recover any data from an Excel workbook. Recovering macros is a different story, however. They are stored in the workbook in plain ASCII text, so you should be able to recognize the macro code and then copy it from the disk tool.

Finally, if you spend a lot of time developing macros (as Devarajan apparently does), then you may want to build into your development routine a way to backup your macros. There are many ways you could do this, but a very simple way is to simply export the module(s) in which your macros are stored. That way you'll have them available in plain text format, in a BAS file, that you can access and read with any text editor.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (12712) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Recovering Macros from Corrupted Workbooks.