A friend's daughter is due to submit a project tomorrow as part of her final  
high school exams in the UK (GCSE) and the spreadsheet which is a key part of  
it has become corrupt.  Unfortunately, it turns out she hasn't kept a backup. 
 
It was made in Excel 97 and it has macros.  We have tried opening it with  
macros disabled and enabled and it crashes each time.  We have tried repairing  
it using Norton DiskDoctor, have scanned it for viruses (of which there are  
none) and are now getting desperate.  Please can anyone point us in the  
direction of a download or repair service that is accessible in the next 12  
hours!  Preferably one that isn't going to cost a fortune, if such a thing  
exists, but it is critical that we get it open so any suggestions are welcome. 

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Clarification of Question by lynetter-ga on 24 Apr 2002 09:32 PDT

Wow, that response was amazing, within 30 mins of posting I had a solution.   
Thank you everyone, and thanks Google.  I'm going to close the question now so  
that she saves money since the solution that works is going to cost her around  
US$90.  But thank you everyone again. 

You could try OpenOffice or StarOffice to open the file, it might be possible
for it to handle it. --> http://www.openoffice.org

http://www.excelfix.com/

Found by searching:
Excel corrupt recovery

Haven't tried it but it looks like what you want.

 - josh_g-ga

http://datarecovery.mjm.co.uk/excel.html seems like a good company, 2 hour 
returns...

If you search (google) with "recover corrupt excel file" you'll get plenty of 
options. Other than that you could holding the shift key, right click on it 
open with .. notepad and recover the raw text. This can be messy though.

according to microsoft Microsoft Excel Viewer might be able to help you...
freely downloadable from here: 
http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/xlviewer.aspx

support page:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q142117