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Recently some xls, xlsx and doc, docx files get deleted when reinstalling Windows XP, although the files were on other partition (D:) not on the Windows partition (C:).

I have recovered the files using Recuva and Puran File Recovery, but the files are corrupted after recovery.

When I try to open xls and xlsx it show below message:

popup

Then if I press Yes in the pop up message file opens and show like this:

workbook

And when try to open doc and docx file it shows:

doc popup

Then If I press 'OK' it opens as below. Every doc file only shows this text(in below picture) and the text from the doc file is missing.

enter image description here

I'm unsure as to why the files are corrupted. Is there any way to repair files in this state?

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The reason why the files are broken is usually file fragmentation. The recovery program finds the entry and knows its size and location. Many programs just do a data grab and grab that many bytes and hope for the best. Some grab more bytes than necessary praying they got it all and sometimes that works.

On other occasions the file is NOT contiguous and so some other random file is mixed in with the first file. When office detects the random data it says "I don't know what this is junk is" so it barfs(for lack of better word) the rest of the data raw into the document hoping for the best.

Here is a way over simpified example.

FAKE Sample data

1 10 6 5 129 129021 1291239 scooby 12 349 394 935 2349 1923

In real life the markers are way more complex than just finding a letter where numbers should be so they can not easily be automatically detected.

If the software is expecting a number and it finds "scooby" it is not a number so it panics because it does not know what to do.

You could try a better recovery product like Photorec(free) by cgsecurity or buy RStudio or getdataback for ntfs or one of a hundred other programs.


Use the below software to try to fix the damaged files you have.

http://www.officerecovery.com/excel/order.htm OR https://online.officerecovery.com/

There is a real tool to repair your damaged office files. Try the free thing or buy it.

I have tried a dozen programs and there software did the best job for me.

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