Linux (or any other Unix) program "strings" will recover text fields, but not tell you which they were. It cannot recover numbers, formulae, or line/column data.
It might be worth trying a program that always has to take a guess about the internals of Microsoft's files, such as OpenOffice. But in the long run, the best solution to the problem of corrupted files is to take daily backups or use a plain-text storage that can be inspected and possibly repaired with a text editor, XML for example.
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