I have some old Microsoft Word 1997-2003 documents (.doc) files that I have been trying to recover. When I try to open them I get the message: ”Word found unreadable content in [document name]. Do you want to recover the contents of this document? If you trust the source of this document, click Yes.”
When I click either yes or no, it then states “Word
experience an error trying to open the file. Try these suggestions:
*Check the file permissions for the document or drive
* Make sure there is sufficient free memory and disk space.
* Open the file with the Text Recovery converter. “
Some other files that I try to open, appear in symbols and
weird text. A “File conversion” window pops up stating: “Select the encoding
that makes your document readable.
Text Encoding: [ ]Windows (Default) [ ] MS-Dose [x] Other encoding:
The one selected is “Turkish (Windows)”
It then gives a preview of the document which looks like a bunch of boxes and weird text objects.
Is there a way to open these old documents and safely repair/restore them?
I am using Windows 10, Microsoft
Office 2016. I am able to open other old Word documents without any issues so
am assuming some of them are damaged or corrupted? I’m sure there must be a way
to repair/recover them??
I have also tried opening these documents on my old desktop computer that has Windows XP and I think Microsoft Office 2007
I have tried the following:
- Opening in Wordpad, Notebook and Libre Office Writer but it all looks like jibberish
- Open the damaged document in draft mode without updating links (Method 1 from here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-US/office/troubleshoot/word/damaged-documents-in-word )
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
