Question:
How do I fix a corrupt rtf file?
Kris H
2008-11-19 00:33:32 UTC
I have been working on a project in wordpad for several months. Today, when I was doing some editing, I encountered a strange problem. I'm not sure what I hit but suddenly little square characters popped up where I was typing and I was unable to remove them. I freaked and closed the document to try and erase whatever I did. Now I am unable to open the file! When I was prompted if I wanted to save changes, I was sure I hit "no" but now I'm not so sure. I've tried opening it in every other program I have and I get a message that the file has been corrupted or it simply won't load at all. When I try to reopen the file in Wordpad, it just sits there and I get a percentage of loading but it won't load all the way and then freezes. This file is very important to me and I know I'm a fool for never backing it up.

I looked at repair file programs but most of them seemed geared towards Word Doc's, this is just an rtf file. Does anyone know how I can possibly save my work? I would very much appreciate any help anyone could offer. Thank you, -Kris
Three answers:
L S
2008-11-19 01:58:37 UTC
I would suggest trying to open it with Word 2007 because it is stronger in recovering corrupt files than earlier versions - it recovered a Word 2000 document for me. Also, try OpenOffice - it's pretty good at getting back what it can.



You should also try any version of Word or anything else you can get your hands on such as Publisher to try this trick:

Open the program.

Choose File --> Open.

Navigate to the folder where your file is.

Click on the "Files of Type" drop down arrow (near the bottom of the Open dialog box) and look for something along the lines of "Recover text from..." and try that.



You will definitely get a lot of rubbish but somewhere in there you might also find some of your work. Be warned that sometimes with WordPad/RTF docs, they have a character, then a square, then a character, then a square... but Word and Publisher should be able to figure that out for themselves.
2008-11-19 00:49:37 UTC
If you did not save it when it asked then any changes you've made will never be recovered even if you found the best repair software because what you want was not applied to the corrupt file. So it is like it was never there. The best you can get back in the information from the last time you saved and nothing else after that.
2016-10-25 15:49:55 UTC
Open a command on the spot and bypass to the position your CHK information are placed. they are many times contained in the FOUND000.CHK folder or some thing. type those: J: cdFOUND000.CHK reproduction *.CHK *.RTF change J with the rightcontinual letter of your flashcontinual. If the CHK information are contained in the inspiration folder then bypass the cdFOUND000.CHK area and do the reproduction command. hopefully, a number of your RTF information will be recovered.


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