USb flash drive wants to format and has files on it.

Hi dawn1993,
Sounds like your FAT table may be corrupted.
You can try this to repair:

1- In windows, click start
2- if keyboard has windows button, press "windows" > R, then type "CMD"
    if not, in windows 7 or 8.x,  click start, then type "cmd" into search box
Either way, you're now at the DOS command prompt.

You can see the options by typing:  chkdsk /?
But, you'll likely want to just try to repair.

3- type: chkdsk D: /F   (where D: is the drive letter of your flask drive).
press enter, and it will evaluate the drive, and attempt to repair.

Worth a try!
Otherwise, Norton and others have disk repair programs.

-Larry (Lbiederman)

Rather than chkdsk I'd use a data recovery application such as GetDataBack https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

GetDataBack is free to try.

If it works and can see your files, pay the money and buy the application and recover your data.

none of those worked. If I format it, will I be able to get the data back?

formatting does not help to get the data back - on the contrary
if you need the data - use a recovery service like i posted, or select one in your neighbourhood

If data is very valuable, I agree with Nobus - send it in for data recovery.
If not, you can format (which destroys all data), but the drive may be usable again.

-Larry

sorry - he just agrees with me  -and i get no credit?
that does not seem ok

I sent the usb flash drive off and they recovered the files. Thanks for your help!