Unfortunately, documents created in the Word text editor, which is included in any office suite, regardless of the year of development and release, are most susceptible to damage among all Office files. And far from always the automated tools built into this editor allow you to restore the necessary documents. After all, it also happens that the file does not even open, and neither from the "Explorer" nor through the file menu of the program itself. What can be done to repair a damaged Word file? To do this, you can use several universal solutions, which are further proposed to be considered in full.
Problems related to corrupted Word documents
First, let's define why documents of these formats are so often damaged. It's not just about the office editor,which for some reason has the ability to "fly out" or "hang" at the most inopportune moment. Sometimes the root cause can be all sorts of viruses that, well, just love user files of this type. But they most often contain important or confidential data, since it looks very doubtful that an ordinary user or even a trained experienced office clerk will save such data in text files, not to mention all kinds of cloud services or programs for managing passwords with special containers where all information is stored in encrypted form. But usually, alas, it is Word that crashes.
How to recover a damaged Word document automatically?
As a rule, after a crash, when restarted, the text editor automatically determines that some file has been closed. You can only recover a corrupted Word file if you are prompted to do so if it was originally saved and autosave was enabled.
The default auto-save interval set in the application does not suit many, therefore, in order to protect yourself from possible negative consequences, it is better to immediately change it by setting the minimum interval (1 minute). In this case, with automatic recovery, you can count on at least some result.
File recovery when opening documents
But what if the Word file is damaged to such an extent that from the "Explorer"It doesn’t even open, but from the side of the program the reaction to it is zero? Do not rush to use all sorts of additional third-party programs for now, but try using another no less interesting recovery tool that is available in the main editor set.
In this case, we are talking about opening a corrupted Word file using the file menu for this, but not with selecting a document that can be shown in the history, indicating its location when using the browse function. After selecting the file in the drop-down list of the open button, select the "Open and restore" item. It is possible that this will give the desired result. But what to do if the document cannot be brought to life by any of the above methods? To do this, you will have to resort to the help of additional funds.
What is Recovery Toolbox for Word?
Today, a decent number of programs for quick resuscitation of office documents (and not only them) have been developed. However, not all of them are equivalent to each other, and some generally fail when files are deeply damaged, reporting either the impossibility of recovery or giving similar errors.
The program described below for recovering damaged Word files, according to the overwhelming majority of specialists, experts and users who have used it in practice, is not only one of the most powerful and effective,when other applications do not cope with the task assigned to them, but also as easy to use as possible. True, some functions in it are available only to registered users. It makes recovering a damaged Word file a breeze.
Key Actions
There is nothing supernatural about using this app. The procedure used to quickly restore the desired document is as follows:
download and install the program (it will take a couple of minutes at most);
- select the required file with the browse button or enter its name in the field specially designed for this;
- press start analysis button;
- agree with the proposal to start the recovery procedure;
- view scanned text;
- if everything suits you, click the restore button, choosing from the proposed options either export to Word or convert to a text file and wait for the process to complete.
Save and export recovered data
And here the main problems begin. The fact is that you will not be able to restore a damaged Word file and export immediately to the original format, since the application will immediately issue a notification that the program needs to be purchased.
At best, if the original document contained only text without formatting or additional inserts like graphicsobjects, elements of the WordArt collection, or something similar, the content can also be saved as a text document, then copied when opening the file in the same Notepad and pasted into the editor. But even in this case, the requirement to officially purchase the software product may follow. In such a situation, you will have to buy an activation key or download a hacked version. If you have an official release installed with all available features, all that remains is to set a new name for the saved document and specify the encoding. Again, note that even when exporting to Word, the formatting will be lost and the text will be pasted as it was shown in the analysis result window.
Last tips
Based on all of the above, we can safely say that the use of specialized third-party tools for recovering Word documents, unless the damage has reached an extreme degree, is not always justified, since in practice the tools of the editor itself work quite effectively. But in the case when no actions help, you cannot do without such utilities. Of course, the program described above is certainly one of the best in its class, but buying it confuses many, even though it restores any documents and with any damage literally within a couple of minutes. But even here there is a loophole, which the creators of the application either did not take care of, or forgot.
To bypass restrictions, highlightall text in the scan results window, using the Ctrl + A combination, copy the contents to the clipboard (Ctrl + C), and then paste either into Notepad, or into Word, or into any other text editor!
