How To: Recover a Microsoft Word document
Successful Microsoft Word recovery depends, like all data recovery tasks, on how the document was lost in the first place.
How to recover 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 a number of 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 the specialist Microsoft Word document recovery tool DOC Regenerator. This product is often able to repair corrupt Word documents using text found in previously saved copies of the file.
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How to recover a deleted Word document
- 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.