Unable to open Lotus 123 Spreadsheet file with *.123 extension

I have a Lotus 123 spreadsheet which had three years work on it and was approximately 16mbs in size. My wife was taken ill and I had to call an ambulance. In my anxiety I switched the computer off rather than shut it down. When I returned to my computer a week later it ran Scandisk before starting windows and reported two faulty files. The computer then booted into Windows 98 SE normally. I tried to load my 123 file which seemed to load successfully. I then ran Scandisk again which reported that my 123 file and a file that was named with a load of numbers were cross linked. Because my 123 file had loaded correctly I told Scandisk to correct the problem which it did by creating *.chk files.

Since the "correction" Lotus wont open the file. I have tried Excel but my version doesnt recognise *.123 workbook extensions. Microsoft Works Wordprocessor is the only program that will open the file but it creates over 50,000 pages. I have tried copying and pasting the file into Lotus but it wont paste although it will paste into Wordpad as gibberish. I have used Norton Disk Editor and can read the file or part of it but the file that was crosslinked to it turned out to be emails from Outlook Express which are attached to the end of my file. I copied the file via Norton and tried to paste it into Lotus using both paste options but Lotus in Lotus the paste options are greyed out. I know it was silly to just switch the computer off but I really was  very worried about my wife. Any help that you can offer me will be very gratefully received.

Regards
GrahamStart Free Trial