Excel spreadsheet rescue — when the workbook your business runs on breaks

What we fix

The five spreadsheet disasters we rescue most

Every rescue starts with a diagnosis, but almost all of them fall into one of these:

• “The file won’t open” or Excel reports it as corrupt. Sometimes Excel’s built-in Open and Repair sorts it (see the free steps below). When that fails — which is exactly when most people find us — we work through deeper extraction options to pull your data and formulas out of the damaged file.
• #REF! carnage. Someone deleted a few rows, a column or a whole sheet, and now formulas across the workbook show #REF! instead of numbers. We trace what the broken references pointed at and rebuild them.
• Formulas overtyped with values. A well-meaning colleague typed this month’s figures straight over the calculations. If the file lives on OneDrive or SharePoint, version history can often wind it back; if not, we rebuild the logic from an older copy or from the workbook’s own structure.
• The 90MB monster that takes five minutes to open. Slow Excel is nearly always bloat: whole-column references, volatile formulas recalculating constantly, thousands of rows of invisible “used range”, and layers of stale conditional formatting. We slim the workbook down so it opens in seconds — without changing your numbers.
• Multi-user chaos. Conflict copies, “locked for editing” messages and a folder full of Report-final-FINAL-v7.xlsx. Usually the file is simply stored in the wrong place for teamwork — we set up proper Microsoft 365 co-authoring so everyone works in one live copy. If you’re seeing “we couldn’t merge the changes”, start with our guide to Excel and OneDrive sync conflicts.

How it works

Remote-first, with free collection when hands-on is needed

Almost every spreadsheet rescue happens over a secure remote session while you watch, from £20. We always phone you before we connect — you’ll never see your mouse moving without knowing exactly who’s on the other end — and you see everything we do to your file as we do it.

If the problem turns out to be the computer rather than the spreadsheet — a failing drive, for instance — we collect the machine from you free of charge locally, sort it, and bring it back. We’re not a walk-in shop, so there’s no counter to queue at; if you’d rather talk something through face to face, we meet by appointment at Kinson Community Centre.

Bigger jobs — a full workbook rebuild, untangling years of accumulated formulas, or moving a team onto proper co-authoring — get a diagnosis first and a plain quote before any work starts. No hourly meter quietly running.

Not in Dorset? Remote rescue works anywhere in the UK — the session looks exactly the same from Bournemouth or Berwick. See how our remote support sessions work.

Pricing & honesty

What it costs — and what we won’t promise

Straight numbers, because vague pricing helps nobody:

• Remote spreadsheet rescue from £20 — most single-file problems land here.
• Bigger rescue and rebuild jobs are quoted first, after a proper diagnosis. You approve the price before work starts.
• Ongoing cover: home plans at £18.25 per computer per month, business support from £24.38 per computer per month, and managed Microsoft 365 at £4.85 per user per month — every plan visit ends with a written Service Report so you always know what was done and why. See our monthly IT support plans for how the cover works.
• We’re not VAT registered, so prices are what they say.

The honest-scope bit: no one can guarantee 100% recovery from a corrupt workbook — anyone who promises that is selling software, not a service. What we promise instead is speed and honesty: we’ll tell you quickly what’s recoverable, what it will cost, and — on the rare occasion the data really is gone — we’ll say so plainly rather than charge you to find out slowly. Then we’ll help you set things up so it can’t happen twice.