"The file is corrupt and cannot be opened."

[SRBoddu]

Hi there

I am not able to open my file on any computer. The error message that I get
is as follows:

"The Office Open XML file xxx.docx cannot be opened because there are
problems with the contents.

Details: The file is corrupt and cannot be opened. Location: Part:
/word/document.xml, Line 2, Column: 18268"

Is it possible to repair and recover the valuable contents? If so, please
can you provide step-by-step instructions? Alternatively (and preferably), I
can email the actual file to you if you can do the recovery.

Thanks, in advance, for your kind help.

Kind Regards
SRBoddu

 

[Tony Jollans]

It is not easy to give step-by-step instructions - well it is quite easy, so
I'll try.

Rename the .docx file as .zip.
Reply Yes when prompted about changing the file extension.
Open the zip folder.
Open the word folder inside it.
Open the document.xml file in a text editor.
Find Line 2 Column 18268 - fairly tricky step!
Identify the error - very tricky step!!
Fix the error - possibly also tricky!
Close the file
Close the folders
Rename the .zip back to .docx
Reopen the document in Word

If you can manage to do that, well done, you! If not, send me a copy of the
document and I will try (but no guarantees!)

 

[SRBoddu]

Hi Tony

I have sent the corrupted file to your email address.

I will be overwhelmed if you can do this for me.

Kind Regards

SRBoddu

 

[Tony Jollans]

I have had a little look at the file and it looks like the zip package is
corrupt; I can't extract the document.xml part, so can't even begin to look
at it at the moment. I will see what I can do but it will probably be
tomorrow before I can progress.

 

[Tony Jollans]

I cannot imagine what has happened to this file. Have you done anything
unusual with it? Perhaps written it from Word to a USB key or something
similar?

The document.xml part was corrupted - possibly just missing a section at the
end and I had to mess with the internals of it to even be able to extract
it. Having done that I was able to recover about the first third of the file
but the rest of it was complete gibberish.

I am generally a fan of the new format for its capacity for recovery but, in
this instance, unfortunately, it wasn't as successful as I would have liked.