How to Recover My Corrupted Word Documents After a Virus
A virus can take a terrible toll on a computer. When it tears its way through your hard drive, files can be damaged or corrupted, rendering them unusable. If these files include Word documents, there is hope. Recover your corrupted Word documents using a built-in feature of Word or by using a third-party utility.
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Instructions
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Repairing in Word
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Launch Microsoft Word. Click "File" or the Office logo in Word 2007, then click "Open."
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Navigate to the file that needs to be repaired, and click on it once.
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Notice that the "Open" button in the window that comes up has a black arrow. Click the arrow, then click "Open and Repair." Word will attempt to recover the corrupted document. If this works, the repaired document will appear on the screen.
Repairing with Repair My Word
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Download and install Repair My Word using the link in the Resources section of this article. Launch the program.
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Click the button labeled "Repair/Open." Browse to the corrupted Word document and double click it. The text of the document should appear in the main portion of the window.
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Click the "Save" button. This will save the document as a Rich Text file, with the .RTF extension. Note that the recovery process saves the text from the document, but not the formatting. This means that clip art, fonts, and other extras will be lost. Once recovered, the document can be opened in Word.
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