How To: Recover a Microsoft Word document
The correct way to recover Microsoft Word documents depends on how the documents were lost in the first place. You must go about the task a different way depending on whether the document exists but is damaged or cannot be opened in Microsoft Word, or whether it has been deleted or lost completely.
Recommended recovery software
- If the document exists but is damaged or cannot be opened, try WordFIX.
- If the document is lost or deleted try Word Recovery.
How to repair a damaged Word document
If the Word document exists, but is damaged - for example, it does not display correctly or in its entirety, or it causes Microsoft Word to behave incorrectly - then you can try to recover as much of the document as you can. There are several things you can try to repair a Word document:
If the document can be opened in Microsoft Word
- Save the document to another file format, such as Rich Text (.rtf) or Plain Text (.txt) and then convert it back to Word.
- Copy everything except the last paragraph mark, or all the undamaged portions of the document, to a new document.
- Force Microsoft Word to try to recover the document. In the File, Open dialog box, after selecting the document, click the arrow by the Open button and select Open and Repair.
- Use the Recover Text from Any File converter. In the File, Open dialog box, select "Recover Text from Any File (*.*)". (This converter is only available in Microsoft Word 2002 and later, and may need to be installed.)
If Microsoft Word cannot open the document
- Close Microsoft Word, then click Start, Run, type winword /a and press Enter. Try to open the document using this copy of Word.
- Insert the damaged document into a new document. Create a new document, then click on Insert, File, select the damaged document and click Insert.
- Open the file using WordPad, then re-save it to a new file, or copy the contents and paste them into a new Word document.
- Use the Recover Text from Any File converter. In the File, Open dialog box, select "Recover Text from Any File (*.*)". (This converter is only available in Microsoft Word 2002 and later, and may need to be installed.)
If the recovered Word document is still damaged
- Try using one of the specialist Microsoft Word document recovery tools WordFIX or DOC Regenerator.
These two products perform recovery in different ways so it is not the case that one is better than the other. WordFIX is quick and works in most cases so this is the best one to try first. If it fails or the results are unsatisfactory then try DOC Regenerator. Both these products are available in trial versions so you can see which works best for you before buying.
- See a tutorial showing how to repair a Word document using WordFIX
How to recover a deleted Word document
If a Microsoft Word document has gone missing then it may have been accidentally deleted.
- The first step for deleted Word document recovery is to look in the Recycle Bin!
- If the document is not in the Recycle Bin, and you are sure it must have been deleted recently, then use an undelete or unerase data recovery tool like Uneraser to recover the deleted Word document.
How to recover a lost Word document
- If you don't know how the Word document was lost, if it may have been deleted a long time ago, or if it has been overwritten or corrupted, then it is best to use a specialist Microsoft Word document recovery tool like Word Recovery or DOC Regenerator.
- See a tutorial on how to recover Word documents using Word Recovery.
