WordPad: a text lost after PC crashed. I need the text, please.

Hi everybody!
You are my last chance:

After my PC crashed and restarted, I lost all the text in my document in WordPad.

I was Googling a lot, downloaded several repair softwares, reading many instructions on internet how to repair it but no success.

In some repair software it said the document has no data in spite of the fact in a folder / Properties it says it has 220 KB. In other repair software I made some changes and I see a lot of crazy texts in the document.

Please, is here anybody I could send the document to, who could try to repair the text? I gave it up. I was doing my best for many days and do not have any energy anymore.

Many thanks in advance

Human said:

In other repair software I made some changes and I see a lot of crazy texts in the document.

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Hello, and welcome to the forum. First of all open a new document in Wordpad, type some text and save. Reopen that document. Is all the text readable.?
Secondly, Wordpad has no autosave function so I am assuming you manually saved it. What is the file type of the document that has erroneous text.
Thirdly, you speak of repair software. What software?

You can zip the file, and upload the zipped folder to any cloud server, Onedrive, dropbox, google drive. You can then share a link to the file here.

I strongly suggest you do not create your documents in wordpad. If you do not have MS Office, LibreOffice or Open Office (both free)are full blown office suites that can do everything MS Office can do. Either of these office suites are also compatibe with MS Office file types.

Many thanks for your reply. To answer your questions:

1) Yes, the text of the test is readable.

2) Yes, before the PC crashed, I saved the document manually. The file type of the document that has the crazy text is: WordPad (Rich Text Document, (.rtf)), again, the same type, after I made some changes in a repair software.

3) I used these repair softwares, for example: Recover Files, Recuva, RTF Repair Kit... But maybe I did not use the softwares correctly...Maybe someone who knows how, could repair it.

P.S> On request I will send the broken document / a link.

The only one I'm familiar with is Recuva. I've used it many times.It is used to recover DELETED files from the drive. When one deletes a file, it is not actually gone. Recuva can recover the file for you. However, it can ONLY be recovered intact if the space where it resided on the drive has not been overwritten with other files. The resulting recovery by Recuva would be exactly what you describe...a bunch of unreadable junk.

If the file is now unreadable by Wordpad, you could attempt to open it in another word processing app, but I'd be willing to bet you would get the same result.

A file can get corrupted by a lot of things. A crash could certainly do it. , That's what file corruption is...data that can not be read by the app that created it or any other compatible app.
Could the file be recovered? Maybe by some professional data recovery center who have all the tools to do it. But the cost is steep. The tools available to a general user can not do all that a data recovery center can.

The only suggestion I can offer is to try using Windows own Windows File Recovery from the MS store. It is run from the command line. But I truly do think you would be spinning your wheels and would get the same result you got from Recuva. Get Windows File Recovery from the Microsoft Store

Sorry, I don't have anything to suggest. Maybe the others know more about it than I do and will have more positive suggestions for you.

Would you like to try it? Should I send you the broken document / a link?

Sorry, but it's not smart computing practice to open a word document from an unknown source. That's the way malware gets passed around. Please do not take offense as it is not meant to be personal, I'm sure you are very honest. I would not open a word document from anyone except from a choice few of the members here whom I have had contact with for 2 years now. If you send a shared link to a cloud service, others may not be as proactive in safety as I am.

Why don't you download OpenOffice. It's the exact app I would use to see if the file can be opened or not.

Yes, OpenOffice I tried, as well. No success, either. Only crazy texts.
Generally speaking, don't you have an antivirus to scan a file before you open it? This is my permanent question each time when I see somebody is worried about this.

Human said:

Would you like to try it? Should I send you the broken document / a link?

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I'll take a look. RTF files are harmless and I can use a VM for anything suspicious anyhow. I can't promise I can fix it, but I'll try.

Many thanks, LesFerch!
I've sent you a private message here, now.