How can I open and recover a damaged word document?

[Guest]

I have a 450-paged document that I add to on a daily basis and when I tried
to open it this morning it either won't open and the screen just vibrates or
it opens with unrecognizable characters or codes. I tried doing a system
recovery but that didn't work.

Can anyone help me bring my Word document back to where it was yesterday?

 

[Guest]

Hello-

Do you have the option set for 'Always Create Backup Copy'? If so you may
have a usable backup in the same folder as the original, but it will have a
..wbk extension instead of .doc, but the same file name.

If you don't have that feature on & have not created a backup in some other
way, you don't have too many choices :>(

Depending on your version of Word, you can try File>Open, go to the bottom
of the dialog box, open the 'Files of Type:' list & choose Recover Text from
Any File (*.*)', although this will not recover anything but the text without
it's formatting.

BTW, did I use the word 'backup' anywhere in this reply ?

Good Luck |:>)

 

[Guest]

Thank You!

Weirdly, I just was able to open it after a short period of vibrating
(that's the only way I can describe what happens), it opened and was all
there. But this is the second time this happened with this particular
document and it is a very important document. Do you have any advice on how
to stop this from happening in the future, and what may be causing it?

 

[Guest]

Hi rosemary -

I'm glad it's working, but if you haven't already done so I strongly
recommend that you make a backup copy before it goes haywire again. Also,
make a new backup after any major revision. Unless you know what the problem
is and can successfully address the issue, there is no guarantee that the
matter is resolved.

I'm afraid I really can't say what may have caused it. There are any number
of both hardware as well as software factors that could be involved...
especially with a file of that size. If you have a reliable technician
available you might want to have them troubleshoot the computer. It sounded
at first like it might be a matter of a corrupted doc, but they don't
normally 'un-corrupt' themselves.

Good Luck |:>)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you have a recent version of Word, click the arrow beside Open in the
File Open dialog and choose Open and Repair.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Thank you Suzanne! I didn't have that option but went to your website and
discovered the problem was the "File of type" had to be re-set. Do you know
if that is what would have caused the document to "vibrate" and the title bar
to turn orange?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

No, that's a different one: see “The Word title bar flashes or the Word
program becomes unresponsive when Word is runningâ€
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=812075

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Thank you again!

No, that's a different one: see “The Word title bar flashes or the Word
program becomes unresponsive when Word is runningâ€
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=812075

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.