If you are in the situation when you have an important Word document that got corrupted and you think you lost critical information or countless hours of work, do not let the despair set in. The situation may not be quite as bad as it seems. In this guide, you can find  some solutions you can use when you are dealing with a corrupted .docx file. Before that, the first thing you should do, though, is make a copy of the faulty document before you do anything else. There is a chance that the corruption within the file could become worse over time or that you could destroy the file while trying to recover it. Creating a backup copy of the file now may save you even more headache later on.

What to do if your .docx files got corrupted

Solution 1: Use the inbuilt Microsoft Word Repair tool

Microsoft Word has an inbuilt open and repair tool available since MS Word 2007 that you can use to repair your files. Since it was made by the software manufacturer, it is the safest way to recovering a corrupt file:

Solution 2: Recover text from any file

If you are unable to recover the corrupted Word file, Microsoft Word also gives you an option to recover text from any file. This will enable you to recover your important data and then reconstruct it in a new Word file: The feature will try to fetch all the text from your file. If this does not work, please move on to the next solution.

RELATED: Fix: “Microsoft Word has stopped working” error

Solution 3: Open in Draft Mode

Another solution you can try is opening the file in Draft mode. To do this, follow the simple steps described below:

Solution 4: Use previous versions

In Windows 7 and higher, System Restore will automatically make backups of your documents whenever a new restore point is created (usually at least once a day). System Restore is enabled by default but if you manually turned it off, you will not be able to recover any data using this feature. To check if there are any backed up versions of the file: SPONSORED Note: You will lose any data that was added after the last backup was created and before the corruption occurred but at least you will have at least a part of your .docx file.

RELATED: How to fix Word Online not working or not responding

Solution 5: Open with Notepad

Opening with Notepad will ignore the document structure and pick only the plain text. You can find this plain text and then copy paste it to a new word document but you will lose all formatting and images:

RELATED: Tips for Notepad document recovery in Windows 10

Solution 6: Rebuild the file header

You will have to open several uncorrupted .docx file with a file editor program to identify the header components. By comparing them with the file header of your corrupt file, you may be able to identify corruption in its file header. You can then replace the corrupt header components with good components from another .docx file in order to fix your problem.

Solution 7: Run CHKDSK to check file system error

If file level corruption exists in the Word document, you can run CHKDSK from the command prompt. You may be able to fix the document and gain accessibility. Or else, you would be able to understand the cause behind the issue.

Solution 8: Use third party recovery tools

Several third-party applications on the market are designed to recover corrupt documents.Many third party tools have free demos and we recommend you to use those because nobody wants to spend money only to find out that nothing can be recovered. The demos usually let you see a part of the text and will tell you if it was able to recover everything else. At that point, you can choose to pay if you feel the program will get you the results you wish. Also, be cautious when downloading programs like these off the internet, as some of them may contain malware. The general steps to follow are:

RELATED: The 11 best tools to repair corrupted files on Windows 10

Corrupted .docx files can be a big problem, but we hope that you managed to fix this issue by using one of the solutions described above. READ ALSO:

How to fix corrupt files after using file recovery options Full Fix: Another installation is in progress Office 365 Full Fix: Wordpad.exe application error on Windows 10, 8.1, 7 Download The Latest LibreOffice Version on Windows 10, 8.1

Name * Email * Commenting as . Not you? Save information for future comments
Comment

Δ