MS Word – How to Fix and Recover Word Document Files

‘Microsoft Word’ is one of the most extensively used Microsoft applications that allows user to create, view, paste, copy, edit, save, print and share documents. It enables the user to enhance their documents by inserting animated images, photographs, diagrams, charts, images, shapes etc. MS Word create an electronic document that is widely used to type articles, letters, essays, memoranda, legal content and member list Owing to its user-friendliness, MS Word finds its utilization for commercial, noncommercial and private sectors.

Do you know that MS Word document file is prone to severe corruption? Yes it’s true; a doc file can get easily damaged. MS Word file gets corrupt due to various reasons including Trojan or Virus attacks, abrupt system shutdown, malfunction of any hardware or software and sudden cancellation of the application.

At first instance, a corrupt MS Word file will not open and if it opens it might show some unusual behaviors like improper formatting, incorrect document layout, re-pagination and even the system crash. These changes are the clear indications that your file has damaged.

There are several ways by which you can repair the damaged doc file, these include:

  • Try opening other documents in Word on the same computer
  • Look for other copies of your document on another computer or email
  • Run CHKDSK utility to check corruption at the file system level.
  • Save the document in a different file format like.rtf or.txt. After opening the converted doc, resave it in a new version of.doc or.docx
  • Use Word’s built-in text converter utility. In Word, click on Microsoft Office button in the upper left part and then select Open from the File
  • From the Open dialog select “Recover Text from Any File” from dropdown file list, select the file that you want to convert. Reset the dropdown file list into one of the Word document formats to prevent Word from using the recover text utility
  • Use Word’s Open and Repair. This feature repairs Word documents. To use this feature, follow these steps:
  1. Choose the Open option for your Word 2007
  2. In the Open dialog select the file you wish to open and repair
  3. Click the down arrow beside the Open button and select Open and Repair from the menu
  • Use a shadow copy by right-clicking and selecting Properties from the popup menu. Select Previous Versions tab from one of the available versions on the Properties dialog. (NOTE: Previous Versions tab appears only if your hard drive is NTFS formatted). Be aware of the fact that a shadow copy will not be as complete as a backup you created

If all these steps fail to fix the corrupt file then the possible solution left with you is to go for a ‘third-party’ Microsoft Word Recovery Software. Microsoft Word Recovery Software can effectively perform strenuous task of repairing as well as recovering of If all these steps fail to fix the corrupt file then the possible solution left with you is to go for a ‘third-party’ Microsoft Word Recovery Software. Microsoft Word Recovery Software can effectively perform strenuous task of repairing as well as recovering damaged file in just a nick of time.