The most annoying experience you may have while editing a word document is a crash. Different error messages, unreadable characters, aren't something out of the ordinary in such a situation.
Oh, and what about weird document formatting? The verdict is pretty clear: your document needs a shot. The kind of shot I am talking about is a Word document repair tool or any other way to repair Microsoft Word files.
Tried to fire up a Word document and got this message: "Word experienced an error trying to open the file."? Don't worry too much! The first step in repairing your file is to diagnose it. At least now, you know what is wrong, right? The second step is finding a safe way to repair your faulty Word document. You'll find out more on how to do it in the following sections of this article.
Table of Contents
Part 1: How to troubleshoot Damaged Documents in Word?
In this section, you'll learn to repair a Word document by changing its original format, and then reconverting it to the Word Document format. For this tutorial, no word document repair tool other than Microsoft Word itself. Follow us through to learn this method on how to repair Microsoft Word files:
Step 1 Open your word document
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Launch Microsoft Word;
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Click "File" in the top left former, and then tap "Open";
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Select the corrupted file, and click the "Open" button;
Step 2 Change the document's format
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Go to "File" and click "Save as";
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Select "Other Formats";
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Select the "Rich Text Format (*.rtf)" from the Save As file type list box;
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Hit the "Save" button;
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You can now safely close;
Step 3Reconvert the document to its original format
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Navigate to "File" and then hit "Open";
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Select your document and open it;
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Click "File" in the top menu, and then select "Save as" again;
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In the Save as type choose the "Word Document" option;
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Give the document a new name, and click the "Save" button;
Step 4 Verify if the problems have been fixed
If no strange behavior is encountered anymore, then you have successfully managed to fix the corrupted document. However, if problems persist, you should try saving the file in any other format by repeating steps 1 to 4 all over again. Try converting to "Web page (.htm, .html), Any other processing format or Plain Text (.txt) formats.
Note: Please be aware that changing your document format to Plain Text will remove any formatting. Only consider saving as to this format as an ultimate solution if the others have failed too.
Part 2: How to Repair Word Documents within Clicks?
1. Wondershare Repairit
If all the methods you have applied so far failed, don't worry! We have prepared another solution that will help you repair Microsoft Word files. This one is using a repair tool called "Wondershare Repairit". This easy-to-use software can successfully repair corrupted documents, videos, and photos while preserving their original formatting.
You can repair all kinds of files that have been created in Microsoft Word 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003, and so on. You can choose three different repair options that will safely make your Word Document usable again. After repair, you can see your full document, filter text, or view it as raw text. This software can also repair embed videos and images in Word 2013 documents.
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Repairs MS Word files safety.
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Repairs .Docx files that are inaccessible, or start repagination automatically, or show unreadable characters
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Repairs heavily corrupted Word files in text or machine-readable format.
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Displays the preview of files in three different formats after completion of the repair process
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Supports Windows 11/10/8/Vista/7, macOS 10.10~macOS 10.15.
2. Repair Word Document in Word 2007 and 2010
Please download Repairit from here and let's see how can you repair Word documents using this software:
Step 1 While in the dashboard, the file location window is shown. Select the target drive, and click the "Add" button, and wait for the system to automatically locate files;
Step 2 After the search is done, select the files you want from the results box, and click the "Repair" button;
Step 3 The fixed documents are revealed, you can select one and preview it.
Step 4 Click the "Save" button on the Ribbon to proceed with saving any file. Click the "Select New Folder" option and select a location.
The system displays a notification window after the document has been saved. Furthermore, you can also repair Word documents online.
This video can help you fix your corrupted excel files with a step-by-step guide.
*Please Note: You cannot save any files in the unregistered version. You must acquire the full version to save any repaired files.
Attention:
If you want to repair Word online and your corrupted Word file is no more than 300MB, you can try the online version of Repairit
Tips:
1. If you are using the Word document repair tool presented above, don't forget to first exit Microsoft Word, as this software is using shared components in its repair session;
2. If you have to deal with a corrupted file hopefully you can successfully repair your Word document using one of the two presented above repair methods. However, don't forget to backup data from time to time. This might save you a lot of time and energy;
3. If you don't want to deal with knowing how to Repair Microsoft Word files at all, then you should take preventive measures. Not safely removing a USB containing a word file that is opened and used by your computer can produce an error. Always use the correct USB removal procedure;
4. An article on Techrepublic.com says that you should make a copy of your corrupted document and keep it somewhere safe even before attempting to repair it. In case you make it worse than it was, at least you have a previous version that you can attempt repairing again;
