Urgently need to rescue a corrupted Word file

[DS9Continuing]

Hi guys, don't usually post in this room.

I've been writing a script, i was on page 40 already. It started as a Windows-created Word .doc file, the usual. I had been writing in it using TextEdit on a Mac laptop, and it had been working fine.

Then I came to it one morning, and it said, specifically, "Could not be opened because it is not in the right format. The file might be corrupted, truncated, or in a different format than you expected."

I checked the flash drive I've been backing everything up on, and that copy is corrupted too. Presumably I just copied the bad version over the top of the good version before I realized it was bad.

I know how there are sometimes invisible files on a Windows system that you can recover data out of. But since i was working on a Mac, I don't know if that system creates similar files or not.

I took the file back to Windows and tried there - no luck. Word's own recovery tool had no success with it either.

I downloaded a program called Recovery Toolbox, which is supposed to be for exactly this problem. While the program worked perfectly well on normal files, this one file was apparently so very corrupted that it crashed the program, not responding, alt-ctrl-del, the works.

Somebody please suggest something, help me here, please. I really don't want to have to start afresh on this whole script after I'd already written 40 pages of it. I can do, I remember mostly what i wrote, but I really don't want to have to.

Thanks in advance for any advice or help you can provide.

 

[Johnny Rico]

Shit creek and something about a paddle comes to mind. But then again, I'm no expert on the matter.

 

[TerriO]

My first thought would be to try and open it in WordPad in Windows. Maybe there's something in there that Word is glitching on that WordPad won't.

If that one doesn't work, try Notepad. You'll probably get a lot of crap text around it (I just opened an existing Word document in Notepad and it was a mess, but the base text of the Word file was still there), but you should be able to dig out the text of the script if it'll open.

If it won't open in Notepad, I'm kind of at a loss without actually seeing it myself, I'm afraid.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Is it possible that you just applied the latest Microsoft Office Service Pack? The reason I ask is that the latest Service Pack, in the name of security, won't allow documents created in pre-2003 Office to be opened and gives a similar message.

Except that wouldn't make sense. That would only apply to the Windows Office. Shouldn't apply to the Mac.

I'd definitely try Terri's solution. Open it straight into Notepad. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of junk (I just opened a recent Word document in Notepad to look), but the text will be visually obvious.

 

[DS9Continuing]

TerriO, I want to have your babies.

The Wordpad trick didn't work, it just gave me lots of ascii bollocks.

But the Notepad trick did - like you said, it's all over the place but at least it's there.

You have a fan for life. Thanks so much!

 

[TerriO]

Not a problem, lvsxy808. Glad it worked. That junk text in there is how Notepad converts Word's format coding, which is why it's all over the place, but the text is usually buried somewhere in the mess.

And thank you for giving me the opportunity to figure this trick out. This is a good trick for me to remember, because when I usually see corrupted Word files (part of my day job is software support), you can at least open them up in Word. This is the first time I've tried this on a Word document that couldn't be opened elsewhere. This is good information to know. Thank you for allowing me to learn it.

Silver linings all around, this. :thumbsup:

Since the problem's solved, I'll go ahead and close this up.