I cannot access my 3.5 Floppy disc that I saved in Microsoft Excel under the
name Book2.  I never had trouble accessing it before, it just doesn't want to
respond when I last updated data.  Please provide simple, easy instructions to
follow so that I may understand how to retrieve.

vincenzo...

While it's unclear whether your floppy drive is working, this answer
should cover all the bases. If your drive is working, then the disk
is bad. If your drive is bad, you can get a new one, but there's a
good chance it caused damage to the disk anyway. So verify that your
drive works with another disk. If not, replace it yourself, or have 
someone do it for you. Then go to the home of Steve Gibson's 
SpinRite program (free) here:
http://grc.com/spinrite.htm

SpinRite is a DOS-based program which can easily find disk errors,
on your hard drive or a floppy drive, and is capable of restoring
sectors which Windows Scandisk will mark as bad. Additionally, it
can rather easily restore all the data on such a disk.

Here's a description from the pdf document, found here:
http://grc.com/files/sr5_manual.pdf
on this page:
http://grc.com/srdocs.htm

"During analysis of the drive's surface, SpinRite first reads the data
from
 the sector it is preparing to test. If the data cannot be read
completely or
 correctly, the DynaStat Data Recovery system is invoked and displays
 this screen:
 Hard disk controllers usually achieve sufficiently reliable operation
by
 correcting small read errors which occur when reading back a data
 sector. However, if the sector's error has “grown” too large, the
drive
 will report that the sector cannot be read back at all.
 Through a system of statistical data analysis, DynaStat first locates
the
 region containing the sector's error, then employs SpinRite's
 understanding of the drive's relationship between data and magnetic
 flux-reversals (as evidenced by SpinRite's surface analysis
technology)
 to heuristically determine the missing flux reversal patterns, and
the
 data they represent.
 DynaStat completely recovers the data from a damaged sector or
 drastically reduces the data loss."

The price is right, and you will have the added benefit of having
obtained a wonderful tool for checking the health of the rest of
your drives. If your floppy drive is working, you'll need it to 
create the floppy disk to run SpinRite from DOS. If your drive is
bad, and replacing it restores your ability to access the data on
your disk, I hope you'll feel that this software I'm recommending
is more than worth the cost of this answer.

If SpinRite can't recover the data, you'll have to utilize 
professional recovery services (if the data is worth the 
expense), but I doubt you'll have any difficulty.

When floppy disks age, they commonly develop problems in 
"sector 0" making the disk unreadable. SpinRite can 
correct this. Take note that, if you have a number of
other disks which you purchased around the same time,
you can expect more of them to fail, so you might want
to run SpinRite on them, as well, before they fail.

I've had similar difficulties myself, and personally use
and recommend this software. If it doesn't recover your
data, the links below can point you to professional
data recovery services.


Searches done, vial Google:

floppy data recovery
://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=floppy+data+recovery

floppy data recovery Gibson
://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=floppy+data+recovery+Gibson

floppy disk sector 0
://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=+floppy+disk+sector+0&btnG=Google+Search

If you need further assistance, please feel free to post
a request for clarification BEFORE rating this answer.

sublime1-ga

do other floppies work . or all floppies are not being read??
also U should try to obtain a floppy head cleaner from your local
computer supply store. and try it after that

Hi,
   In my office also we experienced similar problem before and able to
retrive the info in the following way.

I feel the problem is only with the floopy disk and not with the
drive. This you can verify by inserting a new disk in the drive and
check whether you are able to open. If yes then the problem is with
floppy disk. It may be due to bad sectors.
Step1:
Before doing anything further first copy the whole contents in the
defective floppy  to a new fresh floppy.
Use the command diskcopy from the dos (NT)prompt.(Do not use the
ordinary copy command)
Insert the defective disk
Give the command diskcopy A:A/v

The command will copy the contents to temp area and ask to put the
target disk.
Insert the new target disk.

After copying the content it will again ask
 whether you want to copy another disk(Y/N)
Reply N.
Now you got the replica of old disk contents(including defective data)
in the new defectfree disk.
-----
The explanation disk copyof the command taken from windows help menu
is given below.


Diskcopy

Copies the contents of the floppy disk in the source drive to a
formatted or unformatted floppy disk in the destination drive.
diskcopy [drive1: [drive2:]] [/v] 

Parameters 

drive1 
Specifies the drive containing the source disk. 
drive2 
Specifies the drive containing the destination disk. 
/v 
Verifies that the information is copied correctly. Use of this switch
slows the copying process.

Diskcopy messages 

The diskcopy command prompts you to insert the source and destination
disks and waits for you to press any key before continuing.
After copying, diskcopy displays the following message: 
Copy another diskette (Y/N)? 
If you press Y, diskcopy prompts you to insert source and destination
disks for the next copy operation. To stop the diskcopy process, press
N.
If you are copying to an unformatted floppy disk in drive2, diskcopy
formats the disk with the same number of sides and sectors per track
as are on the disk in drive1. Diskcopy displays the following message
while it formats the disk and copies the files:

Formatting while copying 
 ------- 


Step2:
Use the chkdsk utility(part of windws) in the new disk which may
correct some defects if possible. If you have any disk checking tools
try with them also.

Step3:
Try to open the xls file from the new disk. If it opens problem
solved.

If not open please see the problem solving procedures listed in the
question
Subject: URGENT - help recovering a corrupted Excel file 
Category: Computers > Software 
Asked by: lynetter-ga 
List Price: $20.00  Posted: 24 Apr 2002 09:02 PDT 
Expires: 24 Apr 2002 09:33 PDT 
Question ID: 3359
-----------------------
I used to retrive the data from corrpted excel file from the free tool
listed in the following site and it worked fine.
http://www.erlandsendata.no/english/downloads/tools.htm

Hope it will solve your problem.
Regards.
RAC

the above are ecxcellent resources and I'd like to add one more.
http://www.emulators.com/explorer.htm
although it is not cited as a data recovery tool i have been several
times able to recover unreadable data useing it .selecting "NONDOS
FLoppy in Drive A"
Also Spinrite.. is no longer either shareware. or freeware .while the
rest of these are .

phi-ga...

Imagine my embarrassment! You're right that
SpinRite is no longer freeware or shareware.
It now costs $89. However, it can commonly
recover data which is unrecoverable by other
means, in addition to verifying and insuring
the health of all your storage media, hard 
disks and floppies. I still think it's worth
it, even at that price.

ADD summary :

Most of the time, you're basically toast. Stick it in another floppy
and see. If it works, great. If not, live and learn.