Link Safe

There are few things more frustrating than being unable to open a file that contains important information, or finding that when you do open the document it contains a load of gobbledygook. Rather than tearing your hair out, try repairing the file using Word’s built-in recovery tools. Click the Office logo (or File if you’re using an older version of Office), then Open and locate the corrupt document. Click the arrow next to the Open button and choose ‘Open and Repair’ from the menu. If this doesn’t fix the problem, try clicking the arrow next to ‘All Word documents’ in the Open dialogue box, choose ‘Recover Text from Any File’ and select the unreadable document. Word will then convert and try to recover the text from the damaged file. 

If that doesn’t work either, and you’re using Windows 7 or later, right-click the document, choose Properties and select the Previous Versions tab. This lists older copies of the file that have been backed up by System Restore. Select an entry and click Open, and it should open in Word without any problems, although you’ll lose any data you entered after that version was saved. Note that System Restore needs to be turned on for this to work. If none of Word’s built-in tools proves effective, try uploading the corrupt file

to OfficeRecovery’s online repair tool for Word documents (online.officerecovery.com/word). Just click

‘Choose file’ to select the troublesome item (it needs to be in DOC, DOCX, DOCM or RTF format), then click ‘Secure Upload and Repair’ to recover the data and save it to a new Word document. Now comes the catch: to download the repaired file straight away, you’ll need to pay £6.45. You can see a free ‘demo’ version to find out whether the fix has worked, although this is usually limited to a few, partially obscured pages. Alternatively, you can sign up with OfficeRecovery for a free repair, although you’ll have to wait two

weeks to get your salvaged file. You can also recommend the service on your Facebook page, website or blog to get a discount code you can redeem against one free job.