Three or Four years ago, I had Solar Panels installed and I had been
keeping a daily record, in a LibreOffice spreadsheet, of how much power
my Solar system said it produced and then I'd go to my account at my
Suppliers web site to see how much they claimed I had drawn from the
system and how much I had fed into the system on a daily basis.

The spreadsheet was arranged in three columns (Panel power production,
Power Fed-in, Power Drawn out) per month, with twelve sets of monthly
columns per year, then three/four sets of yearly figures.

I closed the file, I was asked if I wanted to save the revised data AND
did I want to use the current font/character set/whatever (I think it
might have been UTF-6??)

I must have stuffed up when closing the file a couple of weeks ago,
because now, all I see in that file (I've since started another file to
record 'new' data in.) is a string of cells (each with just an asterisks
in it) stretching off way into the right/distance.

Is there any way I can reclaim the data in that Spreadsheet, maybe
opening it in kWrite (or something simple) to examine the File Header
information to determine what character set was used .... Or anything else??

TIA.
--
Daniel

On 2024-01-30 10:08, Daniel65 wrote:
> Three or Four years ago, I had Solar Panels installed and I had been
> keeping a daily record, in a LibreOffice spreadsheet, of how much power
> my Solar system said it produced and then I'd go to my account at my
> Suppliers web site to see how much they claimed I had drawn from the
> system and how much I had fed into the system on a daily basis.
>
> The spreadsheet was arranged in three columns (Panel power production,
> Power Fed-in, Power Drawn out) per month, with twelve sets of monthly
> columns per year, then three/four sets of yearly figures.
>
> I closed the file, I was asked if I wanted to save the revised data AND
> did I want to use the current font/character set/whatever (I think it
> might have been UTF-6??)
>
> I must have stuffed up when closing the file a couple of weeks ago,
> because now, all I see in that file (I've since started another file to
> record 'new' data in.) is a string of cells (each with just an asterisks
> in it) stretching off way into the right/distance.
>
> Is there any way I can reclaim the data in that Spreadsheet, maybe
> opening it in kWrite (or something simple) to examine the File Header
> information to determine what character set was used .... Or anything
> else??

The file is in fact a ZIP archive. You can decompress it and see the
individual files inside, and then you can open at least some of them
with an editor.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On Tue, 30 Jan 2024 13:30:50 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> On 2024-01-30 10:08, Daniel65 wrote:
>> Three or Four years ago, I had Solar Panels installed and I had been
>> keeping a daily record, in a LibreOffice spreadsheet, of how much power
>> my Solar system said it produced and then I'd go to my account at my
>> Suppliers web site to see how much they claimed I had drawn from the
>> system and how much I had fed into the system on a daily basis.
>>
>> The spreadsheet was arranged in three columns (Panel power production,
>> Power Fed-in, Power Drawn out) per month, with twelve sets of monthly
>> columns per year, then three/four sets of yearly figures.
>>
>> I closed the file, I was asked if I wanted to save the revised data AND
>> did I want to use the current font/character set/whatever (I think it
>> might have been UTF-6??)
>>
>> I must have stuffed up when closing the file a couple of weeks ago,
>> because now, all I see in that file (I've since started another file to
>> record 'new' data in.) is a string of cells (each with just an asterisks
>> in it) stretching off way into the right/distance.
>>
>> Is there any way I can reclaim the data in that Spreadsheet, maybe
>> opening it in kWrite (or something simple) to examine the File Header
>> information to determine what character set was used .... Or anything
>> else??
>
> The file is in fact a ZIP archive. You can decompress it and see the
> individual files inside, and then you can open at least some of them
> with an editor.

Ya, probably. But. if not, what does `$ file <WEIRD-FILE>` report.

On 1/30/2024 4:08 AM, Daniel65 wrote:
> Three or Four years ago, I had Solar Panels installed and I had been keeping a daily record, in a LibreOffice spreadsheet, of how much power my Solar system said it produced and then I'd go to my account at my Suppliers web site to see how much they claimed I had drawn from the system and how much I had fed into the system on a daily basis.
>
> The spreadsheet was arranged in three columns (Panel power production, Power Fed-in, Power Drawn out) per month, with twelve sets of monthly columns per year, then three/four sets of yearly figures.
>
> I closed the file, I was asked if I wanted to save the revised data AND did I want to use the current font/character set/whatever (I think it might have been UTF-6??)
>
> I must have stuffed up when closing the file a couple of weeks ago, because now, all I see in that file (I've since started another file to record 'new' data in.) is a string of cells (each with just an asterisks in it) stretching off way into the right/distance.
>
> Is there any way I can reclaim the data in that Spreadsheet, maybe opening it in kWrite (or something simple) to examine the File Header information to determine what character set was used .... Or anything else??
>
> TIA.

How many bytes does the file have ?

If it is zero bytes, then direct recovery might not be possible.

Like Carlos says:

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/Z5DxFybC/ods-zipped-content.gif

Inside content.xml, it looks like this. This is one row containing 1 <tab> 2 <tab> 3 as the data content.

Some amount of material was removed to make this appear less complicated.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<office:document-content
<office:scripts/>
<office:font-face-decls>
<style:font-face style:name="Liberation Sans" svg:font-family="&apos;Liberation Sans&apos;" style:font-family-generic="swiss" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
</office:font-face-decls>
<office:automatic-styles>
<style:style style:name="co1" style:family="table-column">
<style:table-column-properties fo:break-before="auto" style:column-width="2.258cm"/>
</style:style>
<style:style style:name="ro1" style:family="table-row">
<style:table-row-properties style:row-height="0.452cm" fo:break-before="auto" style:use-optimal-row-height="true"/>
</style:style>
<style:style style:name="ta1" style:family="table" style:master-page-name="Default">
<style:table-properties table:display="true" style:writing-mode="lr-tb"/>
</style:style>
</office:automatic-styles>
<office:body>
<office:spreadsheet>
<table:calculation-settings table:automatic-find-labels="false" table:use-regular-expressions="false" table:use-wildcards="true"/>
<table:table table:name="Sheet1" table:style-name="ta1">
<table:table-column table:style-name="co1" table:number-columns-repeated="3" table:default-cell-style-name="Default"/>
<table:table-row table:style-name="ro1">
<table:table-cell office:value-type="float" office:value="1" calcext:value-type="float">
<text:p>1</text:p>
</table:table-cell>
<table:table-cell office:value-type="float" office:value="2" calcext:value-type="float">
<text:p>2</text:p>
</table:table-cell>
<table:table-cell office:value-type="float" office:value="3" calcext:value-type="float">
<text:p>3</text:p>
</table:table-cell>
</table:table-row>
</table:table>
<table:named-expressions/>
</office:spreadsheet>
</office:body>
</office:document-content>

My data values of "1 2 3" are recoverable.

Paul