Recovering Damaged Word Documents

Microsoft Word is one of the most important and widely used software applications of the business world, boasting a solid track record of safety and security. However, as with most applications, errors and damage can occur to files as a result of various software disruption including viruses, windows registry errors, sudden shutdown, or mistakes in the storage process. Frequently, this damage may appear in the form of incorrect characters, page crashes, or failures to load. While it may initially appear that there is little to do when facing one of these scenarios, appropriate responses can stop and often repair the damage caused.

How to respond to a damaged Word documents:

It is important to distinguish between the possible sources of damage when attempting to fix a problematic Word document. The response to a document that is experiencing formatting errors when loaded is different from the response to a document that shows symptoms of virus corruption or registry errors. When a document loads with incorrect formatting the first and easiest fix is to copy the entire document with the exception of the final paragraph, and move this curtailed document into a new Word page. This works because Microsoft Word associates section and style formatting by last paragraph, and therefore a removal of this paragraph can often remove any formatting errors. It can also help to copy this document free of section breaks as they are likely causes of formatting disruption.

If the file damage has resulted from a more serious issue, such as malware interference or registry errors, there are also ways of combating this and recovering lost material. Historically this process has involved finding older saved versions of a document and hoping to recover one free of damage, a laborious and all too often unsuccessful task. However, recently the software market has welcomed a new range of Word recovery tools. One of the best applications for this is Word recovery.

Word Repair works by examining the coding of a Word document, (.doc or .docx file) to find patterns of corruption or material file degradation and then restore the file to as close to its original source as possible. It eliminates or repairs damage associated with viruses, save errors, critical power interruptions, or any other source. This application supports every edition of Microsoft Word and promises excellent prospects for data recovery.

Alan Chen is President and Chairman of DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including word recovery, excel repair, outlook repair and sql recovery software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com.

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