10: Rebuild the file headerĪlthough every Word document is different, Word documents that are created by a common version of Word have a common file header. For more on the shadow copy feature, see How do I… Configure and use shadow copy in Microsoft Windows Vista?. (This tab exists only for files stored on NTFS volumes.) The Previous Versions tab will show you any previous versions of the file that are available. When the document’s properties sheet appears, select the Previous Versions tab. To do so, right-click on the document and select the Properties command from the shortcut menu. If a shadow copy of your document exists, it may be possible to recover a recent version of the document. Windows Vista automatically saves shadow copies of some files to the hard drive. 9: Use a Vista shadow copy of the document This isn’t necessarily foolproof, but it does work on a lot of problematic documents. Just select the file in the Open dialog box and choose Open And Repair from the Open drop-down list in the bottom-right corner. Word XP and later offer an Open And Repair option, which you can use to force Word to attempt a recovery. Note that this method is limited to documents in the Word 97-2003 format (not docx or dotx files). You will lose Word formatting and nontext items such as graphics, but you should at least be able to extract most of the text information from the file. This filter will import straight ASCII text from any file. Then, choose Recover Text From Any File from the Files Of Type drop-down list and open the document. When the Open dialog box appears, select the troublesome Word document. You may also be able to recover the text portion of a document using Word’s text converter. Alternatively, you can use a file editor (a hex editor) to manually extract anything salvageable from the file. One approach is to use another word processor that supports Word documents. 6: Extract the raw textĪlthough saving the Word document as an RTF or TXT file usually works pretty well, that technique does you no good if Word won’t open the file. Sometimes, using a format such as RTF or TXT will cause some of Word’s codes to be stripped from the document, which often fixes the problem. If you can open the file in Word, try saving the file in an alternate format. If nothing else, running CHKDSK allows you to test the integrity of the file system, which allows you to determine whether the problem exists at the file system level or within the document itself. Your problem could be caused by corruption at the file system level, and CHKDSK may be able to fix the problem. Try running CHKDSK against the volume containing the corrupted file. Try selecting the Sent Items folder and using Outlook’s Search feature to look for the document’s name. If so, a copy of the document may still be in Outlook’s Sent Items folder, attached to the email message you sent. In many cases, you may have emailed a copy of the document to someone at some point. Making a backup copy of the file now may save you even more heartache later on. There’s a chance that the corruption within the file could become worse over time or that you could destroy the file while trying to recover it. If you don’t have a backup copy of the corrupt document readily available, make a copy of the corrupted file right away and store it on removable media. This isn’t really a recovery trick, but it is a crucial preliminary step. Try opening your “corrupt” document from another computer. Before you start trying to restore a backup or repair a file, try opening other documents. It could be Word or even Windows that is having the problem. LEARN MORE: Office 365 Consumer pricing and features 1: Don’t assume that the document is corruptĪutomatically assuming that a document is corrupt can be a big mistake. Note: This article is also available as a PDF download. Here are some things you can try when you’re dealing with a corrupted Word document. But hang on: You may not have to accept data loss. You’ve lost critical information and/or countless hours of work – or so it appears. If you’ve ever had an important document get corrupted, you know the despair that sets in. TIOBE Index: Top 10 Most Popular Programming Languages Top Tech Conferences & Events to Add to Your Calendar IBM, ISC2 Offer Cybersecurity Certificate But before you resign yourself to losing the document contents, check out these techniques for salvaging your text. Few computer experiences are worse than having a Word document blow up on you.
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