How to recover Word documents

If you have lost an important Microsoft Word document, or it has become corrupted, don't despair. There are several things you can try in order to recover your data. And if all else fails, there are Microsoft Word data recovery programs that can get your data back.

Repairing a corrupted document

If your document has become corrupted, then fixing it could be easier than you think. Microsoft Word has a document repair tool built-in. Click File, Open and locate the file you want to recover, then click the arrow next to the Open button and select Open and Repair.

If that doesn't solve the problem then try using the option to recover text from any file. Click Tools, Options, select General and make sure that Confirm conversion at Open is checked, then click OK. Next, click File, Open. In the Files of type: drop-down list, select Recover Text from Any File. Then try opening the document in the normal way. If you don't see the "Recover Text..." option in the drop-down list then you must install the Recover Text Converter from the Microsoft Office CD.

Finding lost documents

If the document you want is lost then it's possible that it was saved by mistake in a different location. It is not unknown for an accidental slip of the mouse to move a document into a different folder through inadvertent drag and drop. Before thinking about data recovery, use the Windows Search tool to see if the file isn't lurking somewhere you didn't expect. The search tool lets you look for a file by name, or using a phrase that you know is contained in the document itself.

A common cause of lost DOC and RTF files is simply deleting them by accident. Always look in the Recycle Bin. When you open the Recycle Bin, click the Type column header to sort the file list by type. This makes it much easier to find a document of a particular type (Microsoft Word Document in this case) than scanning through the entire contents of the Recycle Bin.

Recover lost Word documents

If the tips given above don't uncover the missing document and it is something important, then you'll need to try recovering it using data recovery software.

There is a great number of different data recovery tools, and it can be hard to know which one to choose. Some use different techniques to look for lost data, or have different features to simplify the task, or a simpler user interface. So it's impossible to give a general recommendation that one particular tool is best.

Uneraser

If you're sure the file was deleted, and deleted pretty recently, then a basic undelete tool will probably do. It shouldn't have any problem finding your Word file if it was deleted, and because the product is not specialized to Word document recovery, it's more likely to come in handy in the future, too. In that case, Uneraser would be a good choice to try.

Word Recovery

If you're less certain about how or when the document was lost, a specialized product such as Word Recovery (or Office Recovery if you do a lot of work with different Microsoft Office applications) might be a better choice. If you create large numbers of Word documents then its powerful searching and filtering functions will help you to locate the file you're looking for.

DOC Regenerator

Another product that has been used to recover lost Word documents with great success is DOC Regenerator. This program has the ability to recover Word documents from partial copies when multiple versions of the file exist on the hard disk. This gives it a better chance of recovering something usable when the files recovered by other products are rejected by Word as being corrupt.