Corrupt Microsoft Office documents

Question

The Word documents icon shows properly, but when I try to open it, it gave me a message:

File conversion
Select the encoding that makes your document readable.
Text encoding:
(then I have 3 choices with the circles beside them to select): (1st choice) Windows (Default) (2nd choice) MS-DOS (3rd choice) Other encoding:

Document direction:
(then I have 2 choices with the circles beside them to select )
(1st choice) Right-to-left (2nd choice) Left-to-right

Under that there is a window that says Preview, I can see the text of my document (which is unreadable). Whatever I choose - I see the same unreadable symbols.

It doesn't matter on what computer I try to open it on, I still get the
same results.

Now does anybody know what am I talking about? Does anybody know how can I get my documents back?

Answer 1

Those dialog messages appear when the file you're trying to open is corrupted. Normally, Word creates a backup copy of the opened file, but if the Automatic Save isn't configured to save the files properly, then you need to use an application to attempt a recovery. Luckily, there are applications like Recuva that can search the hard drive's clusters for a backup copy of the file. Download the application through the app's page at Software Informer and then start it. Use the intro wizard to configure the search parameters. Specify the type of file, search location and eventually enable Deep Scan. It might take a while, but it's more effective than current scan. If you find the file and it's marked with green, then you can restore it. In case the file is with yellow or red, recovery is available partially or not at all.

Download application: http://recuva.software.informer.com