How to recover a Protected AutoRecovered (.asd) file?

[MadJack]

Here's the problem.

I was happily writing when Word started acting weird... I thought I had
written an odd invisible character since it was telling me there was
something wrong with the last word of a paragraph with the first of the next.
Sucessufully "fixed" the problem after a couple of tries but Word suddenly
crashed...

Well, after finding where the AutoRecovered file was, I tried opening it but
got the following:

"Permission for this document is currently restricted. This document can
only be opened by using Microsoft Office 2003 or later. You can request the
author of the document to send a copy that can be read using the Rights
Management Add-on for Internet Explorer."

Yes, the document is fully protected. Only I can read/write/modify it.

On the ribbon, Protect Document tells me it is not protected... My guess is,
it's talking about the document that contains the above text, not the content
of the actual file.

So... Is there a way to fix that behavior?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can't open an .asd file; only Word can. If such a file exists, Word
should present it the next time you start the program.

 

[MadJack]

I guess I should've mention that Word didn't try (or silently failed) to open
the .asd file after being restarted. Specifically, I got Word with no
document. ie: not a blank document. Nothing.

So, as the help file suggest, I manually opened it and got what I explained
on my first post.

NOTE: The file DOES exist. It is where it should be (as explained in the
help file).

HTH