The two most common reasons that a Microsoft Excel file may fail to open are its read-only attribute and corruption of file. Read-only nature of a file implies that it is not allowed to access or modify a file. However, if the file is corrupt, you should first try to use the Excel repair utility to fix the corruption. This proves useful if the file has some minor corruptions. But if this fails, you should apply other powerful solutions to repair excel file.

For better understanding of the concept, consider, that a Microsoft Excel user creates a workbook with valuable data stored in it. He accesses the file many times with no trouble. But one day, when he tries to open the same file, it gives an error:

“Cannot access read-only document file_name.xls.”

The user receives another error message:

“cannot access file_name.xls.”

Even when trying to open the file as read-only, only the former error message is encountered.

Cause:
The Excel file cannot be opened due to following possible reasons:

File is read-only and user is not allowed to access it.
File is corrupted. This can occur due to several reasons, ranging from unexpected power outage, large file size, network errors, and the like.

Solution:
In order to solve the depicted issue and to re-access data, you should:
Locate the file and right-click it. Click 'Properties' and make sure that the read-only option is unchecked.
Try to open the file. If the problem persists, the file is corrupted. To repair the file, you can:

Open the file with Excel 'Open and Repair' feature
Try to open the file in applications like, MS Word
Try to open the file in safe mode
Use a third-party utility to repair excel.

Third-party repair tools can repair excel file using effective, yet safe, scanning algorithms. These easy to use products are developed with powerful technology to scrutinize the corrupted Excel files and restore the original data in a few simple steps.