Tried to open a existing Excel file and Excel destroyed the file

[Ken_Nielsen365]

I tried to open an existing Excel file with my mailing contacts and got a dialog before it would open the file asking about length of fields and did I want comma delimited.... I just wanted to open the file to work on it but had to answer something in this dialog or I could not move forward, I made a choice just to get rid of it and when I saw the file the fields were overwriting each other, the file was basically ruined and so I quit Excel to close and get out. Before I go back and try to open the file again, is there any reason this dialog appeared? I am doing nothing fancy, just a list of names and addresses. How on earth can I restore my existing file? In 20+ years of using Excel I have never seen this before. Please help as I need to either start my entire mailing list file over from scratch and need to know how to prevent this from happening again. Here is the window that opened up that I saw when I opened the file. Is this something I need to learn more about as I do want to use my list for just name and email to the entire list eventually.

TIA,

Ken

[#2]

@Ken_Nielsen365 

It is probably a text file that you tried (or could have accidentally preset) to open with Excel. This is only a guess, without a file it is difficult to give you an exact or reasonable answer.

Even if it is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, unfortunately it is not so in excel.

It is always better if you include a file (without sensitive data) in your question, so you can get an answer faster.

I would be happy to know if I could help.

Nikolino

I know I don't know anything (Socrates)

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