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Excel : Weird characters

Hi, I'm asking for a friend who saved a excel spreadsheet and instead of account numbers, it's filled with weird characters. I know this is a long shot but does anyone know how to salvage the information? I attached the xls

Thanks in advance
accountant-s-review-report-2008.xls

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Alan

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Alan

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Shino_skay

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Thanks Alan, appreciate you looking into this. I'll give it 24 hours before closing this out and assigning credit.

Dave

Another possibility is trying to use Open Office (freeware) to open the file it case it is corruption related. I've suceessfully used this programm before to recover corrrupted files that Excel crashed when opening

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Alan

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BrainB

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Alan

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BrainB

WRITTEN AFTERWARDS 19th.December 2010
I have just had a similar occurrence which may be related.
I am using Office 2003 in Windows 7 and I recently installed Office 2010 Professional as an addition it its own folder.
It completely screwed up Excel 2003, giving me worksheets with contents like yours.
I have solved the problem by uninstalling both then ...........
re-installed Office 2003 normally
installed Office 2010 in *Windows XP Mode* (I am not likely to use 2010 as much yet).
I am quite pleased with the setup, being able to run 2010 applications from normal shortcuts from Windows 7.
They take a little longer to open initially, but windows come to the front instantly after that.