accessing corrupt file in word 2007

[Steve]

Hello,
Inexplicably, one of my word documents will not open. I get a message that
says "The name in the end tag of the element must match the element type in
the start tab." I've tried repairing, and using Microsoft related
troubleshooting tips, but no luck. I have dozens of other documents that open
fine. Any suggestions?

 

[Graham Mayor]

Word 2007 document format is XML in a compressed format. XML is a tagged
structure - a bit like HTML or Word Perfect document format. It appears that
you have a tag or tags that have become corrupt. Depending on the level of
corruption you could open the docx file using WinRar or WinZip (you *may*
have to add a zip extension for WinZip to recognize it) and extract the
various files from the compressed package. You could then open the xml files
in an XML editor and correct the tabs. Or open the document.xml file in a
text editor that has a wildcard replace function (such as UltraEdit) and
delete the tags. You would then need to re-edit the resulting file in Word,
but you would at least get the surviving text back.

If you want me to have a look at the document, send a copy of it to the link
on the home page of my web site.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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