Emergency Help Request: Corrupt Word file

[kawliga]

I'll keep it brief: Fiancee's Master's Thesis is corrupted. She was working in Word, about 120 page document, and Word X crashed. Now opening it or a copy of it crashes Word.

I've tried opening it on another machine, in AppleWorks, and in Word 2004.

AppleWorks imports it but only about half of the document is present.

I've seen some (very expensive) software that purports to be able to recover corrupt Word files.

If anyone has advice it is appreciated. If anyone owns one of these software packages, I'd pay for your services. Please PM me in the latter situation.

Haste is appreciated. Thanks. Jason

[roncross@cox.net]

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html

You can also try neooffice.

Don't worry, they are free.

Make sure to turn off any macros when you open the copy.

thx
RLC

[hayne]

You can probably recover most of the text by opening the document in a plain text editor like TextWrangler (www.bbedit.com)

And I guess you'll be sure to keep a backup copy of any important documents after this experience.

[Raven]

I want to mention this even thoug its a PC software only (when you have do do somethig, you go for what can do the job) so you have an option if all else failed.
http://officerecovery.com/ provides tools that you can try out for free (nice when you only have one problem document like you do) and they are surprisingly efficient at recuperating files that aren't even recognized as text files anymore.

[kawliga]

Thanks for all this advice. We'll try these suggestions.

She has a backup. It's just that it's been a week since she saved out it. There were tears last night.

I guess we will start her on a much more religious backing up ritual, like daily at least.

Does the fact that it's a 120-page Word document make it more corruption prone?

[CAlvarez]

Yes, large Word documents do seem to be more likely to have issues than short ones. I've never seen one that is completely unrecoverable though, and my first suggestion would be the plain text editor as noted above. She may be able to cut/paste useful text with the only loss being the formatting/fonts/etc.

I also have the officerecovery.com product around somewhere, but really, I've found the text editor to be more effective. If that doesn't work, or looks as if you're not getting everything, I'll be happy to dig it up and try a recovery on your file.

[AYee]

Therre will be always an increased risk for large files that takes a long time to save.

Check your Word X preferences - pretty sure there are settings that will
• save backup versions of your work when you initiate a save

Your best bet is always (on a regular basis) save a copy of the document somewhere else other then your computer. Email it to yourself - to a Yahoo account or a Google account. This way you still have a copy if your computer dies. This is a cheap and easy solution for a a few files.

A good backup solution will always be a removable device, and take it "offsite".

[Raven]

A good backup solution will always be a removable device, and take it "offsite".

A good example of this would be a USB key or CD.

[kawliga]

Resolution:

We opened it a copy in a text editor, and were able to pull the basic copy.

But, hallelujah, I opened on an XP machine in Word 2003 and it actually identified and repaired the corrupted table elements.

She had one data table run amok, but no other loss of formatting.

Thanks all.

[Raven]

To avoid futher corruption or important loss of data, I would suggest you split up the huge word doc into chapters and only merge them back when its time to submit the entire thing. Would make for a lighter document to handle while you have it open and also if it craps out, then only a small part needs to be fixxed or redone. This also means that saving the file and backing it up would be quicker since it would not be 100 megs +. I used to do MS thec support for Office, and trust me you need to split up the file because the larger it gets the more it will get corrupted and the harder it is going to be to
recuperate.

[styrafome]

Another thing that's important to do is in Word's Save preferences, you must turn off the "Allow fast saves" feature. What that does, when it's on, is that instead of saving an accurate file when you save, it tacks changes on to the end and refers to them from elsewhere in the file. It does save faster, but because data is not in the right order and not really cleaned out properly, it causes so many file problems that everywhere I've worked they have insisted everybody turn that feature off.

[Bigc]

For as long as I have used Word I have always enabled "Always Create Backup Copy" in Word Save Preferences.

of course I now have thousands of backup copies littering my HD's, but that doesn't bother me in the least...

[mxk]

I'll keep it brief: Fiancee's Master's Thesis is corrupted. She was working in Word, about 120 page document, and Word X crashed. Now opening it or a copy of it crashes Word.

I've tried opening it on another machine, in AppleWorks, and in Word 2004.

AppleWorks imports it but only about half of the document is present.

I've seen some (very expensive) software that purports to be able to recover corrupt Word files.

If anyone has advice it is appreciated. If anyone owns one of these software packages, I'd pay for your services. Please PM me in the latter situation.

Haste is appreciated. Thanks. Jason

Hi,

I think you can try a utility called Advanced Word Repair to repair your Word document. It works rather well for my corrupt Word documents. Its web address is http://www.datanumen.com/awr/

Alan

[mxk]

I'll keep it brief: Fiancee's Master's Thesis is corrupted. She was working in Word, about 120 page document, and Word X crashed. Now opening it or a copy of it crashes Word.

I've tried opening it on another machine, in AppleWorks, and in Word 2004.

AppleWorks imports it but only about half of the document is present.

I've seen some (very expensive) software that purports to be able to recover corrupt Word files.

If anyone has advice it is appreciated. If anyone owns one of these software packages, I'd pay for your services. Please PM me in the latter situation.

Haste is appreciated. Thanks. Jason

Hi,

I think you can try a utility called Advanced Word Repair to repair your Word document. It works rather well for my corrupt Word documents. Its web address is http://www.datanumen.com/awr/

Alan