Microsoft Word document corrupted

Hello,

While cleaning up my desktop recently, I accidentally deleted an important document without realizing it. A few days later, I noticed that the document was missing. I attempted various methods to recover it, including retrieving it from the recycle bin by using Recuva and Wondershare Recoverit, which did help me get the original document back but unfortunately, the file is now corrupted. I even tried Microsoft Word’s automatic repair feature, but it didn’t help. Additionally, I explored third-party software like Savvy Docx Recovery and even performed a system restore to see if my document was still present but sadly wasn't.

Can I get any help, please?

If the document was not saved not much can be recovered there are online repair sites you can use.

Tried to use the software but got I got this error message

Hi Artom14, welcome to ElevenForums

I wish I had an answer for you. My experience is that Word documents HATE being retrieved after being permenently deleted. I have experienced this myself, unfortunately on more that one occasion.
You obviously emptied your bin at some point after the fact or somehow deleted it by bypassing the bin.

If by some small miracle you duplicated it somewhere else or shared it with someone?

One thing I would suggest: Go to the root of C (or your entire PC if you have other drives) and do a search for the file name with the extension. You never know, it may of accidentally been moved or copied as easily as it was accidentally deleted.
I realise you said you recovered it but… Try every avenue regardless?

I sincerely wish I had a better offering. I mostly just wanted to welcome you.
I hope someone can offer you better news

Thank you and I appreciate it! I have been sitting and doing 20 different things to recover the text document and I had no luck. Could a professional data recovery service help me with this issue?

I'm not sure how successful it would be with Word documents but I used this recovery and repair software previously after an external drive failed with all my files on, before I could reinstall them to a computer. It recovered all the files and repaired the corrupted ones. I can't remember but I think the repair option might mean having to get the paid for version - I did get the paid for versiion. My corrupted files were mostly photos though.

Edit - yes you need the paid for/pro option for repair. I think you can do a month and then cancel rather than have to continue with the subscription.

Artom14 said:

Thank you and I appreciate it! I have been sitting and doing 20 different things to recover the text document and I had no luck. Could a professional data recovery service help me with this issue?

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I have always found them to be very expensive, Artom. But it is obviously releveant to the impotance of the document.

I would show them the document you were able to retrieve and ask them if they can do a better retrieval than what you have.
The thing is though, the more you do on a PC the more chance that the document will get written over. So if you lost it say, 2 weeks ago, that is two weeks of detrimental writing on your drive that may of backed over, dragged through the dirt and spat out your document, that you may need to consider.

Surprisingly, LibreOffice Writer has been able to open most of my Word documents that had gotten corrupted. When Word says it's unable to read a document file, I open it in LibreOffice Writer and then save a copy out. Of course, your document is in bad shape because it's recovered after deletion, but LibreOffice is still worth a try.

Eksy61 said:

Surprisingly, LibreOffice Writer has been able to open most of my Word documents that had gotten corrupted. When Word says it's unable to read a document file, I open it in LibreOffice Writer and then save a copy out. Of course, your document is in bad shape because it's recovered after deletion, but LibreOffice is still worth a try.

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Well that is (partly) good news!

Artom14 said:

Thank you and I appreciate it! I have been sitting and doing 20 different things to recover the text document and I had no luck. Could a professional data recovery service help me with this issue?

Click to expand...

Not a lot of people realise it, but a .docx document is actually a Zip file. Try taking a copy of the document, rename it with a .zip extension, then browse it in File Explorer. You should see a number of folders, the key one is named Word, and the document.xml file in there contains the text of the document, along with xml formatting instructions for Word to use. This is an example (obviously not a corrupted file though). You may be able to recover some/all? of the text.

Bree said:

Not a lot of people realise it, but a .docx document is actually a Zip file. Try taking a copy of the document, rename it with a .zip extension, then browse it in File Explorer. You should see a number of folders, the key one is named Word, and the document.xml file in there contains the text of the document, along with xml formatting instructions for Word to use. This is an example (obviously not a corrupted file though). You may be able to recover some/all? of the text.

View attachment 91497

View attachment 91498

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I never realised that

Just a thought but do you use OneDrive? might be worth checking the OneDrive recycle bin on the Web to see if it's in there.