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I'm having an issue with one of my daily used Excel sheet. When ever I open the Excel sheet I get a blank page. I mean not even the rows or columns are showing.

I've checked the file and its size is 2.09 MB so the file is holding data. I've tried opening it in different versions of Excel on different computers. But they all have given me the same result.

Anyone know of a way I may be able to recover the data that seems to be stuck in the sheet?

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1 Answer

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It's possible that all cells are hidden. It's surprisingly hard to unhide everything after this happens; one quick way is to use Visibility | Unhide (I tested this in Excel 2010 only), or a small macro which should work in most versions.
Steps for the macro solution:

  1. Press Alt-F11 to get the VBA editor to appear
  2. Double-click on ThisWorkbook on the left
  3. Paste in the below code and press F5 to run it

Code:

Sub UnhideAllColumnsRows()
    Cells.EntireColumn.Hidden = False
    Cells.EntireRow.Hidden = False
End Sub

Steps for the menu solution:

  1. Press Ctrl-A to select all
  2. In the Home tab, in the Cells section, select Format
  3. Select Visibility, then Hide or Unhide
  4. Select Unhide Rows

Repeat steps 3-4 for Unhide Columns

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Hi Geoff, I tried this and I get the following Run-time error '1004': Application-defined or object-defined error when I execute the above script. I was not able to try the second solution because when I open the spreadsheet I see nothing at all and all tools in the Home/Insert/Page Layout are greyed out. Would you have any other ideas or options? – Nick M. Apr 26 '12 at 21:02
@NickM. - I tried to simulate what your situation might be by creating a new spreadsheet, doing ctrl-a, then hiding all (ctrl-8, ctrl-9). If you do that in a new spreadsheet, does it look the same as your problem spreadsheet? – Geoff Apr 26 '12 at 21:06
this did give the same look and feel. In office 2010, going to View tab there was an unhide button. (I believe this is what your ment in your first post) which fixed the issue. In office 2003 this option is under the "windows->unhide" selection. Thank you very much for your time and help! – Nick M. Apr 27 '12 at 12:37
@NickM. - Glad you got it working – Geoff Apr 27 '12 at 13:15

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