Corrupt Files and Some
Simple Things to Try

Microsoft Office files can become corrupted and/or unopenable in a number of different ways. The corruption can occur if the application crashes, if Windows crashes, if the file is infected with a macro virus, if the actual sectors on the disk become unreadable, power outages etc. Click here to view some typical corrupt Office errors. Microsoft Office programs are finicky about file structure so when you try to open the file again, you can get an error and the file won't open even though most or all of your data and formatting are still contained in it. More rarely the file will open but the data will appear garbled. As the version numbers of Office get higher, the ability to recover corrupt files increases.

The best way to start recovery of an MS Office file is to make a copy of the file. The next thing you can try to do on the copy is to open the file in the MS Office program, but to use the "Open and Repair" Option. This is only available in Word and Excel.  For Access users there is a database "Compact and Repair" Function through the "Tools" Menu.  For Outlook users there exists a less well known Outlook file repair program available on any PC with MS Office installed. The Outlook PST Repair Tool is described below.

To get to the "Open and Repair" Option in Word and Excel, select your file in the Open Dialogue Window and then left clicking on the little down arrow next to the "Open" Button. See the two dark red arrows in the screenshot below:

In Excel there are three modes of recovery that follow the Open Repair Choice. They are "Repair" and Two under the "Extract Data" Button: "Convert to Values" and "Recover Formulas". In Word, choosing the "Open and Repair" Choice gives an immediate response with no further choices required.

For Excel there are additional explicit free Excel procedures you can use. You can view and try them here. Some of the ideas are applicable to Word, PowerPoint, and Access files, for instance opening the applications in safe mode before opening the files. I'm working on updating the Excel procedure and creating similar ones for Word, PowerPoint and Access.

Another thing I try to do is to open the MS Office File in another Office suite. I have and used for recovery, Microsoft Works 7, Lotus Smart Suite 9.8 (the most recent version), Corel WordPerfect Suite Professional 10 (2002 version), Star Office 7, Open Office 1.1, 602 Office, Easy Office, Ability Office 2002, Ability Office Version 4 Beta, ThinkFree Office, Gobe Productive Office, EIOffice (a new Chinese entrant to this field!) and Xoom Office. I also use the Abiword and Atlantis word processors for recovery. Open Office, 602 Office, Easy Office (for non business use), Abiword, and a version of Atlantis Word Processor are all freeware, and if you have the time, I would encourage you to download these and try to open your files in them before purchasing any software or recovery services. The reason other office suites and programs work, is because they are often less finicky than MS Office about file structure. All the office suites and programs have filters which allow the import of MS Office files.

Another important method I use is to make a copy of your misbehaving file and then rename it with a .txt extension.I Open the file in Notepad and look for things out of place. If you have no luck or lack the time, please contact me. I charge $22 for the 1st half hour and a flat fee of $22 after that with a maximum fee of $44.  I have no file size limitations although files over 500 MB such as Access Databases (see below) need to be shipped over-land to me.

As mentioned, it's worth noting that there are free methods for restoring corrupt Access Databases, Outlook (pst) and Outlook Express (dbx and MBx) mail. There is a piece of free Russian software that will sometimes restore corrupted Access databases. There are also freeware for recovering specifically and Access 95 and 97 Databases. On the subject of Outlook, if you store your messages on your computer, and not on a company server, the place where all the computers user's E-mail, contacts, appointments etc. are stored is in one file with a pst extension. Unfortunately if this file gets larger the 2 GBs in size, it will not open and you will lose access to all your Outlook folders. Microsoft put out a free program which will safely prune off a small portion of the file to get it under 2 GB in size. This pruned off piece is permanently lost. There is another free Microsoft program included with MS Office which will restore corrupt Outlook files. That would be pst files that have other problems than the size issue. See here for the explanation. If this does not work, I can try to restore the file. Finally there is free software for restoring corrupt Outlook Express files (dbx and MBx), again look at the freeware page for the link to the software.

If the free methods mentioned above don't work or don't interest you, there are many pieces of commercial software available for quickly recovering files. Please note is my strong suggestion to try the demo versions of all these programs first before buying. For Word files the best program to start with is DOC Regenerator, although it is labor and time intensive. For a good quick solution to Word corruption, I would use WordFix by Cimaware or WordRecovery by Recoveronix. For Excel, I would use Cimaware's ExcelFix or Recoveronix' ExcelRecovery. For PowerPoint the only real effective choice most times is Ontrack's EasyRecovery FileRepair. For Access the best program is AccessRecovery by Recoveronix although the EasyRecovery Suites comes in a close second. For Outlook (pst) try the free ways mentioned above first then the demos for Iolo's Search and Recover, Recoveronix OutlookRecovery, and Ontrack EasyRecovery FileRepair, with the Iola product the cheapest by almost an order of magnitude.

Please note: Honestly the commercial software and services is the route you will sometimes have to take to recover your data.  That's not to discount the large number of high quality data recovery freeware generously given away by developers, that you can see here.  On those occasions that you try the freeware and it doesn't work, the software in these pages will appear not be worth the time and effort you put in and this can be frustrating. I try to point out at the top of each page, what I see is the likelihood that and difficulty with which freeware can recover your data.

The Google Adsense Ads displayed on the pages should lead you to the standard commercial software and services available for the problem you are having. You can also try the commercial links by clicking on the Navigation Bar by that name on the left. It's also here.

To see if the program works before buying, always be sure to try the demos of commercial software first. Also the difference in prices for software that does the same thing, for instance recovering PowerPoint Presentations, can be a large range like with PowerPoint case $50 - 299. If possible, try several software solutions before buying.  For services, be sure there is a no data, no fee guarantee, and a recovered file preview available.

If you need help, I charge $22 per incident. You can E-mail me at socrtwo@s2ervces.com. I sometimes do free work to gain experience and just be nice :-).