Document Corruption

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

	Identify a corrupt document
	Correct a corrupt document
	Better understand macro viruses
	Take proactive steps in Word to prevent future problems using AutoSave

Additional Written Resources

	Microsoft Knowledge Base articles listed throughout this chapter.
	Q87856 - Troubleshooting Damaged Documents in Word 97 for Windows (Knowledge Base)
	How to troubleshoot damaged documents in Word 2007 and in Word 2010 (Knowledge Base)
	How can I recover a corrupt document and why did it become corrupt? MVP Dave Rado on the MVP FAQ site.
	Fixing Broken Word Documents by Kate Evert at Microsystems
	Microsoft Word 2010 Bible by Herb Tyson, MVP
	Potential Causes of DOCX Corruption - Problems saving to USB Devices http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wordcreate/thread/73a1e1b0-e6cf-43b8-a97f-0b01b5c33da3/
	This chapter in Word format

Levit & James has a program called CrossFingers that claims to repair damaged Word documents most of the time. It is specifically aimed at documents that won't work with Lexis-Nexis' CompareRite. A demo is available for download.

Warning  While information in this chapter may be useful in recovering corrupted documents, it's important to understand that none of these recommendations are guaranteed to restore a corrupt document. Try them at your own risk. Any macro code is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. CK Note: The best protection against document corruption is a good system of backups.

Not from Microsoft - additional cause of document corruption: Master document feature

Using the Master Document Feature - don't use it! Through Word 2010 the consensus of people on the microsoft.public.word newsgroups is that this will cause document corruption, often without warning. It is hoped (but not expected) that this situation will be remedied in a future release.

Charles Kenyon

To rule out other factors, use the following troubleshooting steps:

	Check for similar behavior in other documents.
	Check for similar behavior in other programs.
	Take the file in question to another computer and attempt to duplicate the behavior.
	Use a different printer driver and attempt to duplicate the behavior.
	Rename any templates attached to the document and attempt to duplicate the behavior.
	Change other system components (such as video drivers or fonts) and attempt to duplicate the behavior. For example, if you are using an OEM version of a video driver, switch to a Microsoft Windows video driver using the Windows Setup program.
	Disable any third-party programs that are running (such as terminate- and-stay-resident programs [TSRs], font managers, screen savers, and system shells), then attempt to duplicate the behavior.

If the problem occurs only with a single document after performing the steps above, your document has probably been corrupted.

Correcting a Corrupted Document

This is the easiest and most complete document recovery method; always try it first. Save the file in RTF file format; this format preserves the formatting in your Microsoft Word for Windows document. After you save the file in RTF format, reopen the document in Word for Windows, and convert it from RTF. If this method succeeds, the file corruption may be removed during conversion. If the corruption persists after you save the file in RTF file format, try saving the file in the following file formats:

	Other word processing formats
	Text Only

 

Note  Saving files in Text Only format frequently corrects the document corruption problem; however, all document formatting is lost. This method requires more reformatting; therefore, use it only after other file formats fail to correct the problem. CK Note: Per Geoff W. at Woody's Lounge saving an Excel 2000 file in HTML and then saving it back to XLS removed all corruption while preserving macros and formatting. So apparently even though HTML is a native format, there is some conversion going on.

Copy Everything Except The Last Paragraph Mark To A New Document

Word associates a wide variety of formatting with the last paragraph mark, especially section and style formatting. If you copy everything except the last paragraph mark to a new document, the corruption may be left behind in the original document. In the new document, reapply the section or style formatting.

 

Note  You can select everything except the last paragraph mark by pressing CTRL+END, then CTRL+SHIFT+HOME.

Copy The Uncorrupted Portions Of The Document To A New Document

Sometimes you can determine the location of file corruption in your document. In such cases, copy everything except the corrupted portion to a new file, then use the following steps to reconstruct your document:

	After you copy the uncorrupted portions of your document to a new file, save a copy of the corrupted document in Text Only format.
	Open the Text Only file. Copy the text from this file that was in the corrupted section, and paste that text into the file that contains the uncorrupted portion of your document.
	Reformat the sections you pasted, and then save the recovered document.

Copy Text and Paste As Unformatted Text

If you can open the document but the document is exhibiting odd behavior that could be due to corruption, you can select and copy the text, create a new document, and choose Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted Text. This strips all of the formatting and underlying problems within the document and provides a clean copy of the text within the document use styles to quickly reformat the document text.

Save as a Previous version of Word

If the document can be opened, save it as a Word 6.0 document. If that is not successful, save it as a Word 2.0 document. This often allows the file to be recovered without corruption.

Open The Damaged Word Document In Draft Mode

Sometimes (not always, due to the nature of damaged documents) you can open a document successfully in draft mode when it will not open in other views. Once you open the file, you may be able to recover or repair the file.

To switch to draft mode in Word, choose Normal from the View menu, then choose Options from the Tools menu, select the View tab, and select the Draft Font option.

-or-

Run the following macro to turn off screen updating, open your damaged document, switch to draft mode, and then reactivate screen updating:

Sub Main
ScreenUpdating 0
FileOpen .Name = "FILENAME.DOC" ' substitute your filename
ToolsOptionsView .DraftFont = 1
ScreenUpdating
End Sub

 

Note  In the preceding macro, substitute the name of your damaged document for the "FILENAME.DOC" argument text.

Using this macro may enable you to open documents that you cannot otherwise open due to damage that affects printer setup, page layout, or screen updates in Word. For example, if a general protection (GP) fault occurs in Word before the document opens, you may be able to avoid the GP fault by opening the document using the preceding macro.

Recover Text From Any File

If a Word document will not open and you need to at least get a copy of the text within the document, you can choose File > Open, and in the Files of type drop-down list, select Recover Text From Any File. Using the Recover Text From Any File converter does have its limitations. Document formatting will be lost, along with anything that is not of a text nature. Graphics, fields, drawing objects, and so on, will not be converted. However, headers, footers, footnotes, endnotes, and field text, will be retained as simple text.

 

Note  If the Recover Text From Any File converter is not installed, you will need to re-run Setup to install this converter.

 

Note  When you change the Files of type box to Recover Text from any File in the Open dialog box (on the File menu, click Open), Word will 'remember' this setting and will use it the next time you open a document. To avoid this problem, reset the Files of Type box back to Word Document (*.doc) after you have recovered the document.

Attempt To Recover A Document That Will No Longer Open, By Linking A Good File With A Blank Document And Then Changing The Link Source To The Damaged Document.

Use the following steps to link and change the link to the damaged file:

1. Create a new document. Type This is a Test. Save the document.
2. From the Edit menu, choose Select All.
3. From the Edit menu, choose Copy.
4. From the File menu, choose New.
5. From the Edit menu, choose Paste Special.
6. Select either Unformatted or Formatted text, and click Paste Link.
7. From the Edit menu, choose Links.
8. The Links dialog box appears. Select the filename of the first linked document and click Change Source (in Word 2.x, the button is Change Link).
9. The Open dialog box appears and asks which document you want to change the link to. Select the document you can no longer open and click Open.
10. Click OK in the Links dialog box (in Word 2.x, enter the path and filename).
11. The data/text from the damaged Document will appear (provided there was any recoverable data/text). On the Edit menu, click Links, and select Break Links (Cancel Links in Word 2.x).
12. You can now reformat and save the recovered text. This method works because during a link, part of the header information is not read. This allows you to open the file if this part of the header is the damaged area of the document.

 

Warning  Your firm should invest in a good virus protection software program.

How to Reduce the Chances of Macro Virus Infection