Microsoft also has several solutions for this in its support section. The “Recover text from any file” convertor in the Word user interface is particularly helpful. However, be careful: during recovery, all document formatting and all non-text elements (i.e. graphics, drawing objects, fields, and others) will be lost.
- Under “File” or the Office button, click “Open”
- Click on the “Recover text from any file (*.*)” button under “File type”
- Select the document you want to restore and click on “Open”
- After the recovery, you will notice that the document (mainly at the beginning) still contains so-called “binary data text” which you have to delete before saving the file as a Word document
Alternatively, you can try opening the corrupted file with another text program (such as OpenOffice), where all formatting will also be lost. Internet repair tools are also a possible remedy: the freeware File Repair can repair damaged Excel and PowerPoint files, ZIP, and RAR archives, as well as videos, images, music, and databases. Additionally, DocRepair, supported by Office 2016, offers a free trial version.