I have reproduced this Reference Post – Freeware for Recovering Corrupt Office Files, with some corrections, from alt.comp.freeware below. Not all links have been checked!
++ Word Processor File Corruption Recovery Freeware ++
* http://www.repairmyword.com/%5B/url%5D – Repair My Word is a data recovery program for Microsoft Word documents. It is designed to recover text from damaged or corrupt Word files (.doc files) that will not open normally.
* http://www.wpwriter.com/Articles/Using_WPL…ing_wplook.html%5B/url%5D – Corel WordPerfect corrupt file recovery app.
* ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/WordPerfect/wpwin/8/wp8rest.exe – Another Corel corrupt file recovery freeware app.
* http://www.s2services.com/hosted-freeware/lasrlite.zip%5B/url%5D – With this program, if a Word file gets corrupt, you can undelete all Word files and find an earlier temporary version that Windows stored then deleted.
* http://www.adrc.net/data_recovery_resource…pic/office_tips%5B/url%5D – extensive MS Office corruption tips.
* http://www.s2services.com/hosted-freeware/kvlot32.exe%5B/url%5D – will open Lotus Word Pro files including possibly corrupt ones.
++ Spreadsheet File Corruption Recovery Freeware ++
* http://www.adrc.net/data_recovery_resource…pic/office_tips%5B/url%5D – extensive MS Office corruption tips.
* http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistan…0346561033.aspx%5B/url%5D –
Overview of Microsoft recommended steps for recovering a file.
* http://www.s2services.com/excel.htm%5B/url%5D – My steps you can try to recover an unopenable or corrupt Excel spreadsheet.
* http://skp.mvps.org/wrd00015.htm%5B/url%5D – If you are one of those brave souls who believe in saving only at the end of the job then you are in deep trouble when Word crashes/hangs. Yet, you may be able to recover it or at least some part of it.”
* http://chicago.sourceforge.net/xlhtml/%5B/url%5D – The xlHtml program will take an Excel 95, or 97 file as input and convert it to highly optimized html.
* http://www.45.free.net/~vitus/ice/catdoc/%5B/url%5D – CatDoc is now accompanied by xls2csv – program which converts Excel spreadsheet into comma-separated value file.”
* Methods for recovering data from damaged Excel 2000 workbooks – There are several methods that you can use to recover information from damaged or corrupted files. This article discusses those methods and points you to other Microsoft Knowledge Base articles that discuss the methods in greater detail.
* http://www.s2services.com/hosted-freeware/bytefix.zip%5B/url%5D – “The BYTEFIX utility is designed to address a situation in which 123 Release 5 for Windows (123W) is unable to open certain corrupted .WK4 files. Under a particular set of circumstances, which are unrelated to the operation
of 123W, data files of different types are corrupted when extra bytes (characters) are appended to the end of the file. 123W is unable to read a .WK4 file that has been corrupted in this fashion; consequently, the program generates an “Error Reading File” message. BYTEFIX is designed specifically for those .WK4 files that have been corrupted by the additional bytes appended to the end of the file. Important : BYTEFIX does not correct 123W files which generate the “Error Reading
File” message but have been corrupted by other circumstances (such as disk-write caching, magnets, incompatible network software and so forth).”
* http://www.s2services.com/hosted-freeware/backfour.zip%5B/url%5D – Richard Warr developed the BackFour WK4 file recovery program back in 1996. The software is able to overcome most problems encountered with corrupt WK4 files by converting them back to the simpler WK3 format.
* http://www.s2services.com/hosted-freeware/FIXWK4.zip%5B/url%5D – In January of 1994 reports appeared in the press saying that users of 1-2-3 were experiencing file problems. Issues like this are not widespread but when they do occur are most often are not caused by 1-2-3. File
problems can result from magnets, disk write caching, certain network software, etc. Lotus has tracked these issues and found in a very few cases 1-2-3 is inadvertently saving files which cause a General Protection Fault (GPF) when the files are opened. The enclosed utility (FIXWK4.EXE) can be used to correct problems with files that are causing GPF’s if the problem was caused by this one issue that has been identified by Lotus. All the data in the file should be intact.
* http://www.s2services.com/hosted-freeware/kvlot32.exe%5B/url%5D – will open Lotus 123 files including possibly corrupt ones.
++ Presentation Corruption Recovery Freeware ++
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q193848/%5B/url%5D – PowerPoint Presentation Cloning.
* http://www.adrc.net/data_recovery_resource…nd_recovery.htm%5B/url%5D – extensive MS Office corruption tips.
* http://prdownloads.sf.net/chicago/xlHtml-Win32-040.zip%5B/url%5D – ppthtml is not very helpful maybe but still possible to recover something from a ppt file by converting it to html.
* http://www.s2services.com/hosted-freeware/kvlot32.exe%5B/url%5D – will open Lotus Freelance files including possibly corrupt ones.
++ Structured Storage File/OLE 2/Doc File Viewers – Take apart files into their text, images, maybe vba etc. ++
* http://www.mitec.cz/systools.htm#SSV [/url] – take apart office files into their components (e.g. – text and images etc.) helpful possibly for corrupt files.
* http://docfileviewer.wedding-soft.com/%5B/url%5D – Very small program that can help you with your compound files needs.
* http://www.menees.com/index.html%5B/url%5D – another Doc File viewer.
* http://support.microsoft.com/kb/139545%5B/url%5D – a free Microsoft one.
++ Office File Viewers – May sometimes open files when native app cannot ++
* http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/download…0449811033.aspx%5B/url%5D – various MS Office file viewers. Try opening corrupt files with these.
* http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/ATViewerExe.html%5B/url%5D – Many formats can be shown: text, unicode, binary, RTF, images, multimedia, office files.
* http://www.oasys-software.com/product/dm/columbus/%5B/url%5D – Columbus will open many office suite files. Be sure to right click on the files and choose the Columbus viewer. If you double click on the file in the Columbus Explorer like tree, it will cause your default app to try to open the file again.
* ftp://ftp.45.free.net/pub/catdoc/catdoc-0.94.zip – catdoc is program which reads one or more Microsoft word files and outputs text, contained inside them to standard output.
* http://www.winfield.demon.nl/index.html%5B/url%5D – Antiword displays Word file from the command prompt.
++ Text Extractors – At least get your text back ++
* http://docmorph.nlm.nih.gov/docmorph/%5B/url%5D – The DocMorph Web site allows users to convert files into PDF, TIFF, text, and synthesized speech. The downloadable MyMorph software allows users to mass migrate files to PDF only.
* http://www.ultima-thule.co.uk/%5B/url%5D – TextExtract is a small but powerful program that scans one or more files for text strings, extracts them and saves them into a separate file. Useful if, say, you have a corrupted word processor file, or if you just want to see what text, if any, is inside a file. Configurable extraction. Lovely interface. Very straightforward to use.
* http://members.fortunecity.com/bigg5/frw/diagn.htm%5B/url%5D – This allows you to recover the text from a file if nothing else.
++ Misc. Corrupt File Recovery Freeware ++
* http://www.pchell.com/ [/url] – Everyone has been to PC Hell at one time or another. It’s that place you visit when your personal computer is driving you insane with problems, glitches, and so on. To try to soothe the frustration, we’ll provide some tips, hints, and troubleshooting remedies to help you get out of PC Hell. Be warned however, sometimes there is no exit….
* http://www.securitysoftware.cc/apps.html [/url] – This simple program can be used to ->predictably<- corrupt and then repair a file. I use this to add an additional layer of security to password protected zip files and other types of encrypted files.
Alan
