7

My girlfriend requested me to recover a word file which is her 2 months of work :(, and this is her thesis for graduation.

It shows the "Select the encoding that makes your document readable" screen when I tried to open it, I tried 2 recovery tools but didn't work.

screenshot

*****The history of the issue***** she said she was copy pasting from other files while creating this file(she copy pasted from a pdf too). 2 days ago she opened the file in company pc and worked on it. Wrote 2 pages and saved. Next morning she could not open it. it is possible that an error occured when saving. the computer she worked freezes sometimes , when she was working there was a file in usb she plug out and in it and continue to work. then saved.

|improve this question
  • 1
    What exactly happened to the file to begin with? It's was recovered by word, or something else happened? Also, in which language was to thesis written? – Gnoupi Aug 29 '12 at 13:26
  • At least in OpenOffice it wants Character set, default font, language, paragraph break. Can you share a working document of hers that she created with the same program, it would allow us to know the value for some of those settings. – Dan R Aug 29 '12 at 14:20
  • 2
    I know this is of no help to this question but for future reference: Word has a terrible history of corrupting documents. I always keep copies - set Word to always make a backup copy. Even that doesn't always help. With critical docs, I use a macro that replaces the default Save option with one that makes a backup of the previous version BEFORE saving. – Julian Knight Oct 15 '12 at 11:48
  • I'd like to add to @JulianKnight 's advice and suggest that using dropbox.com will allow you to revert changes to a file over a short period of time. Additionally, this solves several other possible causes of corruption in files, including errors and interuption while copying. sparkleshare.org + (github.com | gititorious.org) would also allow you to progressively version the file. – Ben West Oct 18 '12 at 2:41
  • @BenWest: I've tried using a DVCS system such as GIT with Word. It does work but you still have to commit the file on each change. This really doesn't work with Word as you - even with Word 2010 - still need to save often and files get corrupted seemingly randomly (though its worse with big, complex files and/or using MS folder sync such as Briefcase). The only reliable method I've found is to use a macro to replace the SAVE command as outlined. – Julian Knight Oct 18 '12 at 15:11
1

That file is (as far as I can see) more or less random garbage and doesn't resemble any file format I could recognise. I also ran it through a file(1)-like program which couldn't identify anything. So you're out of luck it seems.

You could try asking Windows for a shadow copy (Previous Versions it's called) of that file, though.

|improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.