corrupted word file

[absy]

Hi, some 3 days ago my secondary HD had a failure (it went unesplaniably
erased at reboot; I had to format it again, before escuing all data with
file scavenger), and as a result one important word document which was in
it, was damaged. When I try to open it with Word 2003, it suggests me to
open it with "open and restore" or with the converter for restoring text
files. The former doesn't work; I installed the latter, but it doesn't work
either. What can I do? It is a very important document.

 

[macropod]

Hi absy,

You could try recovering the text, as described in 'Recover the text from a
damaged document' in Word's help file. Failing that, about the only thing
left is to open the file in notepad and see if there's anything useful you
can copy out to a new file.

Cheers

 

[absy]

Hi absy,

You could try recovering the text, as described in 'Recover the text from
a
damaged document' in Word's help file. Failing that, about the only thing
left is to open the file in notepad and see if there's anything useful you
can copy out to a new file.

Hi macropod,

from notepad's nothing but a bunch of ascii chars except from the beginning
(which is just a tenth of the whole). Possibly that there isn't any recovery
tools besides Word's?

 

[macropod]

Hi absy,

There are tools for searching a hard disk for text strings and the like, but
your chances of recovering anything useful that way are minimal given that
you've reformatted the disk and reinstalled files over the top of whatever
was there before.

Lesson #1: Backup important files - often.

Cheers