How to Recover Documents
If you need to learn how to recover documents, especially Microsoft Word documents, you have several options available depending on the damage. For example, did you know that Word comes with basic recovery tools? These tools can help when a document is corrupt. If you want to know how to recover documents that have been deleted, you'll need to use some other tools.
How to Recover Documents that are Showing Signs of Corruption
Sometimes, a document becomes corrupt and causes Microsoft Word to act strangely whenever the document is open. You may notice that whenever you open a particular document, Word shuts down or freezes. The corrupt document may also display properly or text could be missing.
Here are a steps you can do to try to recover the document:
- Save the document as a .txt file or .rtf file. Open the new file and convert it back to a MS Word format. You may lose some formatting and other enhancements.
- Copy the undamaged portion of the text and paste it into a new Word document. Do not copy the last paragraph mark.
- Use Word's "Open and Repair" option. Go to File and select Open. Browse for the damaged file. Highlight the file and click the down arrow found on the Open box. A submenu appears. Choose Open and Repair.
- If you can't open the document in MS Word, try opening it with WordPad and then re-save the document. You can also copy and paste the text into a new MS Word document.
- Try inserting the damaged file into a new document. Start with a new document, go to Insert, choose File, browse to your damaged file, and click Insert. Save the new document.
If none of these steps work, use a document recovery software tool designed for recovering documents.
How to Recover Documents that are Missing or Deleted
While the above tips are useful for corrupt files, they won't do anything when it comes to recovering deleted documents. If you've deleted a document, the first thing to do is to check the Recycle Bin. Is the document still there? If so, right-click it and choose Restore. If not, check your most current backup.
If the file isn't in the Recycle Bin or saved in a backup, you'll need a data recovery utility. These utilities allow the average computer user to recover documents using sophisticated techniques previously relegated to the experts. You don't have to be technically savvy to use a data recovery utility.
Make sure to act promptly and get a data recovery tool right away because time is of the essence. When documents are deleted, they are removed from view yet remain intact until something overwrites them. Stop all functions that write to the drive where the documents were stored and choose a data recovery tool that is self-booting to minimize potential data loss.
With the right tools, you can recover documents from both corruption as well as deletion.
