Corrupt Word Document - "an invalid character was found in text"

[B. Cheung]

Hi There,

I have Office 2003 and for some reason my word document is corrupt. When I
try to open it I get the following error message "The XML File <name> cannot
be opened because the are problems with the contents.". Clicking the details
button brings up "an invalid character was found in text content". How do I
get around this ? Or at least open the file to extract the data. There is
28 pages worth of notes in here. I have tried changing the extensions to
txt, rtf, etc. but it comes up with gibberish. Searching google comes up
with mostly XML stuff. But this is not an XML file, rather a Word file. So
not sure what happened.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Jean-Guy Marcil]

Hi There,

I have Office 2003 and for some reason my word document is corrupt. When I
try to open it I get the following error message "The XML File <name> cannot
be opened because the are problems with the contents.". Clicking the details
button brings up "an invalid character was found in text content". How do I
get around this ? Or at least open the file to extract the data. There is
28 pages worth of notes in here. I have tried changing the extensions to
txt, rtf, etc. but it comes up with gibberish. Searching google comes up
with mostly XML stuff. But this is not an XML file, rather a Word file. So
not sure what happened.

From the "Open" dialog, under "File Type", have you tried "Recover text from
any file (*.*)"?

 

[B. Cheung]

Hi Jean-Guy,

Actually that did the trick. Thanks. Any idea why the XML message is
coming up as this is a word doc and not an XML file ?

Ben

 

[Jean-Guy Marcil]

Hi Jean-Guy,

Actually that did the trick. Thanks. Any idea why the XML message is
coming up as this is a word doc and not an XML file ?

Glad I could help.

Sorry, I do not know, I would need to see the document, and right now I do
not have the time....

Word is a dark and mysterious mistress! (or master. if you prefer...)