7 Practical tips on how to salvage a damaged Word document

When you try to open a Word document, if the system is not responding, the possible reason is that the document is corrupted. At this point, please try the author of the following methods, may be able to recover all or part of your loss.

I. Automatic recovery of unsaved changes

Word provides a "AutoRecover" feature that helps users retrieve information that has not been saved when a program encounters a problem and stops responding. In fact, after you have to restart your computer and Word without saving your work, the system opens the Document Recovery task pane (Figure 1), which lists all the files that were recovered when the program stopped responding. The file name is followed by a status indicator. Shows what has been done to the file during the recovery process, where "original file" refers to a source file that was based on the last manual save, and "recovered" refers to a file that was recovered during recovery or saved during AutoRecover save.

The Document Recovery task pane allows you to open the file, view the fixes, and compare the restored versions. You can then save the best version and delete the other versions, or save all open files for later preview. However, the Document Recovery task pane is a new feature provided by WORDXP, and in previous versions, Word would open and display the AutoRecover file directly.

Second, manually open the recovery file

The program automatically recovers any recovered files when you restart Word after a serious failure or similar problem. If the file is not open for some reason, you can open it yourself by doing the following steps:

1. On the Standard toolbar, click the Open button;

2. In the Folder list, locate and double-click the folder where the recovery files are stored. For the WINDOWS2000/XP operating system, this location is typically the "C:documentsandsettingsapplicationdatamicrosoftword" folder, and for the windows98/me operating system, the location is typically " C:windowsapplicationdatamicrosoftword "folder;

3. In the File type box, click All Files. Each recovery file name is shown as "AutoRecover ' Save filename" and the program file extension (Figure 2);

4. Click the name of the file you want to restore, and then click the Open button.

"Open and Repair" file

WORDXP provides a new way to recover a damaged document by following these steps:

1. On the File menu, click Open Command;

2. In the Look in list, click the drive, folder, or Internet location that contains the file you want to open;

3. In the Folder list, locate and open the folder that contains the file;

4. Select the file to recover from;

5. Click the arrow next to the Open button, and then click Open and Repair (Figure 3).

Iv. Recover Text from any file

Word provides a file converter, "Recover Text from any file," that you can use to extract text from any file. To use the file converter to recover Text from a corrupted file, follow these steps:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the General tab;

2. Confirm that the Confirm conversion on open check box is selected (Figure 4), and click OK.

3. On the File menu, click Open Command;

4. In the File type box, click Restore text from any file. If you do not see restore text from any file in the File type box, you need to install the appropriate file converter. Installation methods do not repeat;

5. Open the document as usual.

The Transform Files dialog box pops up, select the file format you want. Of course, if you want to recover text from a damaged Word document, select Plain Text (Figure 5), and click OK to press the button. However, when you open a document by selecting "Plain Text," You can only restore normal text in the document, the image objects in the original document will be lost, and the text of the header and footer, such as non-textual information, becomes plain text.

V. Prohibit the operation of automatic macros

If you have an automatic macro code that contains errors in a Word document, an error that cannot open the document is raised when you try to open the document with an automatic macro that does not function correctly because of an error. In Windows Explorer, hold down the SHIFT key and then double-click the Word document to prevent the automatic macro from running so that you can open the document.

Vi. creating a new Normal template

Word stores the default information in the Normal.dot template file, and if the template file is corrupted, it may throw an error that cannot open the Word document. At this point, create a new Normal template with the following steps:

1. Close Word;

2. Use the Find or Search command on the Windows Start menu to locate all Normal.dot files and rename or delete them. For example, in Windows XP, click Start, click Search, and then click All files and folders, and in the all or part of the File name box, type Normal.dot, and in the Find here list box, click the hard drive letter that installs Word, and click the Search button. When you are finished, right-click the "Normal" or "Normal.dot" in the results list, and then click Rename to Type a new name for the file, such as "Normal.old", and then press ENTER;

3. Start Word

At this point, because Word does not recognize the renamed Normal template file, it automatically creates a new Normal template.

Seven, show the confusion of the solution

After you use the above method to open a damaged Word document, if the contents of the document show confusion, then you can put the last paragraph mark outside

is copied to a new document, and may be able to solve the garbled problem with the following steps:

1. Select everything except the last paragraph mark by pressing the Crtl+home key combination, pressing the Crtl+shift+end key combination, and then pressing the shift+← key combination;

2. On the Standard toolbar, click the Copy, the new, and the Paste button.

In fact, in a Word document, the System associates various formatting information with the last paragraph mark, especially the formatting of sections and styles. If you copy everything except the last paragraph mark to a new document, it is possible to leave the corrupted content in the original document, and in the new document, reapply the formatting of all the missing sections or styles