How do I open a corrupt file

[Joanne]

I recently finished some work for a TAFE assignment in Bus Cert III I had it
saved in My Documents then needed to take it to work to check it over, so I
used my memory stick as a saving tool, on the drop down I saved it onto E
(memory stick) next thing that happened was a pop up saying do you want to
replace existing file or make a new one. I should have used "new" instead I
put onto existing file, immediately I lost 6 practice tasks and my whole
assignment. As it merged into the smaller existing portion already saved on
my memory stick..... This is a valuable lesson - never again.... I can not
recover all my work.... 1 weeks worth of serious study...... although i feel
it is on my compt somewhere as the amount of words etc still come up under
the corrupt display when I try to recover it.... HELP

 

[Graham Mayor]

Barely a day goes by without us telling people that saving from Word to
removable media is one of the surest ways of losing your work, but still
people do so. Unless you have a backup, and if the work is that important
you should have, the chances of recovering anything useful are impossibly
slim to non-existent. You need to investigate file recovery software, but
don't be too surprised if there is nothing to recover.

In future ALWAYS work from the hard drive and COPY the results to and from
the removable media - but even then you need to take notice of the warnings
Windows offers when you try to do something that could result in unwanted
data loss..

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Idaho Word Man]

Somebody else just had a similar question, so I'll copy and paste my answer
to KK.

I don't know what version of Word you're in, but Word 2003 has a function
called "Open and Repair."

Open Word (no document, just Word). Then use either the Ctrl-O function or
the File-Open menu option. When the Open screen comes up, navigate to your
corrupt file and select it. (Just select it -- don't double click it.) Next
to the Open button is a tiny down arrow. Select that down arrow and choose
Open and Repair. This gives you at least a chance of recovering some of your
document.

Often you will lose formatting or sometimes chunks of text, depending on
what is corrupt, but most of the time you'll get back at least part of your
document. Sometimes, I think that success with this method depends on either
(a) how you hold your mouth, or (b) whether you're living a good, clean,
honest, Christian life. If it works, say it's because of (b). If it doesn't,
blame it on (a).

Fred