Recovering Corrupt Document Files with StarOffice

Summary: A possibility to try if you have a corrupt document. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 6, Word 95, Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, and Word 2003.)

I had problem this week working on a 500K Word document for a client. Word 97 crashed on his system, corrupting the document. Trying to load the file into his Word 97 or my Word 2000 caused both applications to crash on start up and even bring up Dr. Watson. I had a backup for the document, but had lost about two hours worth of work.

It is interesting that Sun StarOffice 5.2 read the corrupted Word file without problem, although one section of text was not recoverable. Saving the file from StarOffice as a Word document file and loading it back into Word recovered the situation.

Well done, Sun--a recovery system for Microsoft Word!

Tip #1513 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 6 | 95 | 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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