Recovering Corrupt Document Files with StarOffice

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 16, 2026)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

I had a 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!

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1513) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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