Need Help With Corrupted Documents Please

[james_richards]

Hi All,

 

I am a new ICT Technician i work for a school. I get plenty of students coming to me to recover Microsoft word documents that have been corrupted and damaged (you get a MS Word error message when you try to open the document) i use the Microsoft Word Open and Repair feature and 40% of the time this works. Can someone please tell me a software which i can download or buy to help me recover the documents which i cannot recover using Open and Repair feature on MS Word.

 

Than You In Advance!

 

Regards

 

James

[witch]

A google search throws up a lot of products that will do what you want.

I know someone who thinks quite highly of this:

Word repair Free Download

[james_richards]

Thank You Witch for the software link i really appreciate it. I did try google search but it brings up too many junk softwares which do not work. Once again Thank you for your time and help.

[mac_shinobi]

you can either save it as or rename it as a html file and then extract what you can from that or you can use open office ( OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite ) as that is really good at recovering word documents.

 

Its an open source version of microsoft office and a lot better imo.

 

How can I recover a corrupt document or template - and why did it become corrupt?

[james_richards]

Thank You mac_shinobi that is a good idea because i have got Open Office installed on my machine.

[mac_shinobi]

no problem - I normally just use open office. Which I have updated to version 3 cos of the new features etc and its good at recovering word docs for the most part.

 

Short of that I just keep telling them to make sure they keep making a copy on there home drive because there home drive is always backed up - or at least it should be if you have a backup strategy in place that way when they come to you and you cant recover it from open office then you can say well did you copy or back up your documents x y and z to your home area ?

 

student - either yes ( in which case you can recover it from a backup ) and if no then its down to the student and they will have to re do there work.

[james_richards]

Thanx mac_shinobi, so you would load up Open Office then you would open the corrupted document? will you need to do anything else to it?

[mac_shinobi]

Just open it - I normally use open office as a last resort along with the online utilities as you mentioned above.

 

Recover a Corrupt Microsoft Word Document

 

I normally make 2 copies of the same document and rename one with a html file extension and open it using IE or firefox and recover what I can into a notepad document.

 

Or I use the repair option of microsoft word - if that turns up nothing then I try and open it with open office as its repair feature seems to help me out a fair bit.

 

If that does not work there are utils but dont ask me which ones are good or not as it would have to be a test it and try it thing - if you ever do find one thats good and free let me know.

 

Found this not sure if its any good so check it with an anti virus first before installing it etc

 

http://www.repairmyword.com/

Edited February 4, 2009 by mac_shinobi

[james_richards]

Yeh im working on it and if i find a good decent software i will let you know. deffo

[mac_shinobi]

would be appreicated.

 

I was looking on SourceForge.net: Open Source Software or .net as there is a search engine but it returned like 3000 items and dont have time to go through it right this minute

[lill]

bad copy pro is really good for recovering all types of documents, its not freeware but well worth the money.

[Michael]

@james_richards - I think you need to look at why all these documents are becoming corrupted. Are you using multiple versions of Office? A few members here have reported problems with 2007 files on Office 2003, even with the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack installed.

 

Another possibility is one of your hard drives in your server(s) could be on its way out. Running a scandisk (out of hours) may be something you should look at. Really depends if other documents/files/folders are becoming corrupted too.

At times like this, it's also important to make sure backups are in place (just in case).

[AngryTechnician]

One I will recommend against using is anything by Nucleus Technologies. We bought their Access recovery tool out of desperation a few years ago and all it did was a simple string extraction of some of the tables which I had already done myself in Notepad - it missed a bunch of the tables and the dozens of forms.

 

When we asked for a refund under their money back guarantee, and they tried to tell us that it didn't apply because the data was unrecoverable. Several days of terse emails followed before they eventually refunded after I threatened a credit card chargeback.

[james_richards]

bad copy pro is really good for recovering all types of documents, its not freeware but well worth the money.

 

 

Thank You Lill for the link i really appreciate it, i have tried the free trial and i think i will buy it. Cheers.

[ricki]

I agree with Michael you need to look at whats causing the corruption or incompatibility. Try to get one version of office through and try to upgrade all computers together. The other thing it might be is a broken office on a machine or a broken office install on a ghost image, or even a damaged file on the server that has the deploy point.

 

Two put things into perspective I get a couple of broken office documents a month and the vast majority of them are.

I forgot the password to my database.

I did it in a different version of office or even worse works.

Or I turned the power off at the wall when I was saving.

 

Goof luck with the problem.

 

Richard:troll:

[StewartKnight]

I'd recommend (I assume you're not using) Volume Shadow Copy.

It's free, as it's included in Micro&oft Server 2003 (and others) and allows you to recover the document from a previous day / week.

[Maz]

We use Linux + Open Office, works 98% of the time.