Hello everyone,
I really need help. I’ve been working on a LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet for several months and saved it as a password-protected .ods
file on a USB flash drive.
Recently, when I try to open the file, it prompts me for the password (which I know is correct), but after entering it, the file never opens — it just keeps loading indefinitely. It doesn’t crash or throw an error, it just hangs.
After some research, I suspect the file may be corrupted. However, the file size appears unchanged, so I’m hoping that the content might still be recoverable.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far:
- Opened it in LibreOffice Safe Mode → same result (just loads forever)
- Tried OpenOffice → it says the file is corrupted and needs repair, then fails to repair it
- Tried renaming the
.ods
file to.zip
→ but since it’s encrypted, I can’t accesscontent.xml
- Used a tool like Kernel for Calc (evaluation version) → no success or useful results
- Tried uploading to Google Sheets or Excel → not supported due to password protection
At this point I don’t know what else to try. I don’t want to give up on this file — it represents months of work and the password is definitely correct.
Questions:
- Is there any known method to recover or repair password-protected
.ods
files that won’t open due to corruption? - Can the community or any advanced user look at the structure of the file to confirm if it’s salvageable?
- Are there reliable tools or services (even paid) that are known to work with this kind of issue?
Any advice or guidance would be deeply appreciated.