Knowledge Base

How to troubleshoot damaged Word 2002 documents

PSS ID Number: 290932

Article Last Modified on 11/2/2004

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Word 2002

This article was previously published under Q290932

For a Microsoft Office Word 2003 version of this article, see 826864.

For a Microsoft Word 2000 version of this article, see 211634.
For a Microsoft Word 97 version of this article, see 87856.
For a Microsoft Word 7.0 and earlier version of this article, see 187309.

SUMMARY

Damaged document files can cause any program to exhibit unusual behavior. Such behavior occurs because the program attempts to make decisions about what to do based on incorrect information in the file.

The best way to protect yourself against document damage is to keep backup copies of your documents. In the event that you do not have a backup copy of your document, this article provides some troubleshooting procedures you can use to identify and possibly recover a damaged Microsoft Word for Windows document.

IMPORTANT: Microsoft Word 2002 attempts to automatically recover a damaged document when it detects a problem with the file. You can also "force" Word to attempt recovery of a document when you open it by using the following steps:

On the File menu, click Open.
In the Open dialog box, click to select your Word document.
Click the arrow on the Open button, and then click Open and Repair.

For more information about document recovery, click Microsoft Word Help on the Help menu, type recovery in the Office Assistant or the Answer Wizard, and then click Search to view the topics returned.

If Microsoft Word is unable to recover or open your document, use the topics covered in the "More Information" section of this article to attempt recovery of your Word document.

MORE INFORMATION

The following topics are covered in this article: Identifying a Damaged Document

Things to Try If the Document Opens But Shows Unexpected Behavior

Things to Try If the Document Will Not Open

Identifying a Damaged Document

Damaged documents often exhibit behavior that is not part of the program's design (for example, infinite repagination, incorrect document layout and formatting, unreadable characters on the screen, error messages during processing, system stops responding or crashes when you load or view the file, or any other unusual behavior that cannot be attributed to the normal operation of the program). Some of this behavior can be caused by factors other than document damage. To help rule out other factors, use the following troubleshooting steps:

Check for similar behavior in other documents.
Check for similar behavior in other programs.
Take the document in question to another computer and attempt to duplicate the behavior.
Change the attached template to the global template (Normal.dot). If the attached template is Normal.dot, quit Word and rename Normal.dot. After restarting Word, try to duplicate the behavior.

To change the attached template to the global template, follow these steps:
1. Open the problem document.
2. On the Tools menu, click Templates and Add-ins.
3. If the Document template box shows a template other than Normal, click Attach.
4. In the Templates folder, click Normal (Normal.dot), and then click Open.
5. Click OK to close the Templates and Add-ins dialog box.
Start Word with its default settings. You can use the "/a" switch to start Word that will prevent Word from loading any add-ins or from using your existing Normal.dot template. After restarting Word with the "/a" switch, try to duplicate the behavior.

For additional information about the "/a" startup switch and how to use it, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

210565 WD: Word Startup (Command-Line) Switches and Their Purpose

291487 WD2002: What Does the Word Startup Switch "/a" Really Do?

826857 WD2002: What Does the Word Startup Switch "/a" Really Do?
Use a different printer driver and attempt to duplicate the behavior. If the behavior persists even with a different printer driver, you may still need to completely remove and reinstall your existing printer driver.

-or-

Replace the existing printer driver by following these steps.
- In Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, or Microsoft Windows 2000:
  1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Printers.
  2. Right-click the printer that you want to replace, and then click Delete.
  3. If you are prompted to delete all the files that are associated with the printer, click Yes.
  4. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Printers.
  5. Double-click the Add Printer icon, and then follow the instructions in the Add Printer Wizard to reinstall your Windows printer driver.
- In Microsoft Windows XP:
  1. Click Start and then click Printers and Faxes.
  2. Right-click the printer that you want to replace, and then click Delete.
  3. If you are prompted to remove all the files that are associated with the printer, click Yes.
  4. Under Printer Tasks, click Add a printer, and then follow the instructions in the Add Printer Wizard to reinstall your Windows printer driver.
For additional information about troubleshooting printer problems in Microsoft Windows, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

128345 HOW TO: Troubleshoot Printing Problems in Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Millennium Edition

93503 Isolating General Printing Problems

163551 Troubleshooting Printing Problems in Windows NT 4.0

132460 Troubleshooting Windows Print Server Alteration of Print Jobs
Change other system components (such as video drivers or fonts) and turn off any third-party programs that are running (such as terminate-and-stay-resident programs [TSRs], font managers, screen savers, and system shells), and then try to duplicate the behavior.

For additional information about turning off programs that start with Windows, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

192926 How to Perform Clean-Boot Troubleshooting for Windows 98

180902 How to Start a Windows 98-Based Computer in Safe Mode

290367 OFFXP: Troubleshooting Office Programs Under Windows NT 4.0

155681 Troubleshooting Display Problems in Windows NT 4.0

If the problem occurs only with a single document or a small group of similar documents after you perform these steps, your document or documents have probably been damaged.

Back to Topics

Things to Try If the Document Opens But Shows Unexpected Behavior

Method 1: Save the Document to Another File Format, and Then Convert It Back to Word

This is the easiest and most complete document recovery method; always try it first. Save the document in a different file format. It is best to first try saving the document either as Rich Text Format (*.rtf) or Web Page (*.htm; *.html). These formats preserve the formatting in your Word document.

After you save the file in a different format, close and re-open the document in Word, and then save it as a Word Document (*.doc). If this method is successful, the file damage was removed during conversion. If the damage persists, try saving the file in another file format.

It is recommended that you try saving your file in the following file formats, in the following order:

Rich Text Format (*/rtf)
Web Page (*.htm; *.html)
Any other word processing format
Text Only (*.txt)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Saving files in Text Only format frequently corrects the document damage problem; however, all document formatting, graphics, and macro code are lost. This method requires more reformatting; therefore, use it only after other file formats fail to correct the problem.

Method 2: Copy Everything Except the Last Paragraph Mark to a New Document

Word for Windows associates a wide variety of formatting with the last paragraph mark, especially section and style formatting. If you copy everything except the last paragraph mark to a new document, the damage may be left behind in the original document. In the new document, reapply the section or style formatting.

NOTE: To select everything except the last paragraph mark, press CTRL+END, and then press CTRL+SHIFT+HOME. If your document contains section breaks, copy only the text between the sections breaks (do not copy and paste the section breaks because this may bring the damage into your new document).

Work with your Word document in Normal view when you are copying and pasting between documents to avoid transferring section breaks between documents. To change to Normal view, click Normal on the View menu.

Method 3: Copy the Undamaged Portions of the Document to a New Document

Sometimes you can determine the location of file damage in your document. In such cases, copy everything except the damaged portion to a new file, and then reconstruct the damaged section of your document.

NOTE: If your document contains section breaks, copy only the text between the sections breaks (do not copy and paste the section breaks because this may bring the damage into your new document).

Work with your Word document in Normal view when you are copying and pasting between documents to avoid transferring section breaks between documents. To change to Normal view, click Normal on the View menu.

Back to Topics

Things to Try If the Document Will Not Open

There are several techniques you can use to try to open a document that will not open. The method you use depends on the nature and severity of the damage to your document and the nature of the behavior exhibited. Although many of these methods succeed regularly, not every damaged document can be recovered.

Method 1: Open the Damaged Word Document in Draft Mode Without Link Updating

Sometimes, you can open a document in draft mode without link updating when it will not open otherwise. To do this, follow these steps:

On the View menu, click Normal.
On the Tools menu, click Options.
On the View tab, click to select the Draft Font and Picture placeholders check boxes.
On the General tab, click to clear the Update automatic links at Open check box, and then click OK.

If you are successful in opening the document, you may be able to recover or repair the file by using the steps in the "Things to Try If the Document Opens But Exhibits Unexpected Behavior" section of this article.

Method 2: Insert the Document as a File in a New Document

The final paragraph mark in a Word document contains information about the document. If the document is damaged, you may be able to retrieve the text of the document if you can omit this final paragraph mark.

To access a document, but leave its final paragraph mark behind, use the following steps:

On the File menu, click New.
On the General tab, click to select Blank Document and click OK.
On the Insert menu, click File.
In the Insert File dialog box, locate and select the damaged document, and then click Insert.

NOTE: You may need to reapply some formatting to the last section of your new document.

Method 3: Open the File by Linking to It

If the "Insert the Document as a File in a New Document" (Method 2) doesn't work, try this method.

This method may allow you to open the file if part of the file header or if the final paragraph mark is in the damaged area of the document.

Use the following steps to link to an undamaged file, and then change the link to point to the damaged file:

On the File menu, click New.
On the General tab, click Blank Document and click OK.
In the new document, type This is a Test and then save the document.
Select the text and click Copy on the Edit menu.
On the File menu, click New.
On the General tab, click Blank Document and click OK.
In this new document, click Paste Special on the Edit menu.
Select Formatted text, click to select Paste link and then click OK.
On the Edit menu, click Links.
In the Links dialog box, select the file name of the linked document, and then click Change Source.
In the Change Source dialog box, select the document you can no longer open, and then click Open.
Click OK to close the Links dialog box.

NOTE: The information from the damaged document should appear (provided there was any recoverable data or text).

On the Edit menu, click Links.
In the Links dialog box, click Break Link. When you are prompted with the following message, click Yes.

Are you sure you want to break the selected links?

You can now reformat and save the recovered document.

Method 4: Use the Recover Text from Any File Converter

The Recover Text from Any File converter allows you to extract the text from any file. The file does not have to be a Word file. Using the Recover Text from Any File converter does have its limitations. Document formatting is lost, along with anything that is not text. Graphics, fields, drawing objects, and so on, are lost. However, headers, footers, footnotes, endnotes, and field text are retained as simple text.

In addition, after the document is recovered using the Recover Text from Any File converter, there will be some binary data that could not be converted, primarily at the top and bottom of the document. This binary data needs to be deleted before you reformat and save your file as a Word document. For additional information about how to use the "Recover Text from Any File" converter, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

290946 How to recover test from any files by using the "Recover Text from Any File" converter of Word 2002 and Word 2003

Method 5: Open the File in WordPad

When you cannot open a damaged document in Word for Windows (usually because of damage in the file header), you can strip out the file header and open the file as text. When you strip the header information, all formatting is lost. The following method strips out the file header information.

Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then click WordPad.
On the File menu, click Open. Open the damaged Word document.

The Word document should now open as a text file. You may see binary (foreign) characters at the beginning and end of the document. You can delete these characters and any other characters that do not belong to your damaged Word document.

On the File menu, click Save As. In the File Name box, type a new file name with a .doc file name extension. Before you click the OK button, note the folder where the file is being saved so you can easily find it when you restart Word.
On the File menu, click Exit.
Restart Word and open the file you saved from WordPad (the file will have the name you gave it in step 3).
On the File menu, click Save As, and save the file in Word Document (*.doc) format.

You can now reformat your new document and add any graphics, fields, and other formatting that your damaged document may have contained.

Back to Topics

Additional query words: garbage locked hung stop stopped crashed corrupt frozen nothing damaged damage troubleshoot tshoot corrupted corruption inf

Keywords: kbcorrupt kbdta kbhowto kbtshoot KB290932
Technology: kbWord2002 kbWord2002Search kbWordSearch

Microsoft KB Archive/290932

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