ways for recovering corrupt Word documents

[bastiengrandis]

Hey everyone, I need some help recovering a number of corrupt Word documents.

The hard drive wouldn't boot and the file system was corrupt (Windows XP) so I made the drive a slave to the main drive and use some recovery tools to salvage all the documents. The documents show up as a Word document but when opening them it says unrecognizable format.

If anyone knows of an app or a way to salvage the corrupts word files I would be grateful. Thanks.

[georgecochet]

Recover Word document via next steps...

To do this

Open the Tools menu. Click Options. Click the File Locations tab. If the space next to AutoRecover files is blank, then your data is lost. If there is a location, go to that location and open the document.

How to turn on AutoRecovery

Select Tools, Options, Check 'Save AutoRecover info every:' and provide the interval.
Then click on the File Locations tab, Select AutoRecover Files, Click on "Modify..." & provide a location for its to save the files.

How does it work

When AutoRecover is turned on, the changes you make are saved at set intervals in a separate, temporary recovery file. Then, if you have to restart Word or your computer without saving your work, Word automatically opens the recovery file. In some cases it doesn't. In such situations you have to try out the above solution. The recovery file contains your changes up until the last time AutoRecover saved the document. For example, if you set AutoRecover to save every 7 minutes, you don't lose more than 7 minutes of work. All documents that were open at the time of the power failure or similar problem appear for you. Only changes you made after the last AutoRecover save are lost.

Resources which are accessible to get more info about word file corruption and restoration and offer another variants/solutions...

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/how-to-recover-corrupted-word-files/

http://www.filerepairforum.com/forum/microsoft/microsoft-aa/word/1495-word-2010-docx-file-error

http://www.word.repairtoolbox.com/ Word Repair Toolbox

[Johnbrad]

I want to share the Manual Solution to recover lost word document use this steps:-

Step 1: In a Windows box click on 'Tools', 'Folder Options', tab 'Display', 'Show hidden files and folders' (9th chip from the top). It can "see" the hidden system files (administrator rights required).

Step 2: Under WinWord to 'Tools', 'Options', tab 'default folder', select the line 'AutoRecover files'; click 'Edit': Specifies the path temporary Word files. Take note of this directory (eg C: \ Documents and Settings \ XXXXX \ Application Data \ Microsoft \ Word)

Step 3: Go into the directory indicated in step 2 and copy all *. tmp files *.* to date (the one where you lost the file) in a directory (eg : c: \ foo). These temporary documents that match the ones you "lost".

Step 4: Change extensions. Tmp and other.??? . doc order to re-open with winword.

Step 5: Open files with Word and rename shouting "it works!".

If the manual solution isn't working proper way, than use third-party tool to recover word files. Visit here for more information: Word Document Recovery: Corrupted Word Files