# [SOLVED] Can't Recover Corrupt Word 2013 Document



## eagle_eyes (Mar 28, 2005)

I worked on a research paper with Word 2013, and I later found out it's corrupt, and I can't recover it. I get the following error message:

"We're sorry. We can't open <filename> because we found a problem with its contents.

Details:
Unspecified error

Location: Part: /word/document.xml, Line: 2, Column: 0"

Word can't recover the file. Datanumen Word Repair can't repair. I'm wondering if there's an alternate way of opening the file, essentially looking at the file's code to possibly find the problem and fix it.

I, fortunately, found an earlier version that I was able to turn in, but it would be _much_ better to repair the file.


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## SpywareDr (Jun 15, 2013)

*Re: Can't Recover Corrupt Word 2013 Document*

Have you tried viewing it using Windows' Notepad?


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## macropod (Apr 11, 2008)

*Re: Can't Recover Corrupt Word 2013 Document*

See, for example:
How to manually fix content error in Microsoft Word | Bahrudin Hrnjica Blog
Free and Freeware Data Recovery Resources: Secrets of Recovering Corrupt Word DOCX Files
Other than that, you might post a link to the document for a user named Jeeped to work on, at MS Answers: Unspecified Error, word/document.xml, Line:2, Column: 0 - Microsoft Community


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## ammylakai (Jun 9, 2015)

*Re: Can't Recover Corrupt Word 2013 Document*

Answer the questions asked by SpywareDr.

In the meantime, try to open the file with OpenOffice or LibreOffice. Couple of times this already worked.

Hope it helps!!


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## macropod (Apr 11, 2008)

*Re: Can't Recover Corrupt Word 2013 Document*



ammylakai said:


> Answer the questions asked by SpywareDr.


Why? Opening a zip file (which is what a docx file is), is not likely to retrieve anything meaningful.

This is a well-known form of corruption, with a clearly-defined means of fixing it.


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## eagle_eyes (Mar 28, 2005)

*Re: Can't Recover Corrupt Word 2013 Document*

I opened it in Notepad, and it was just a bunch of garbage.

I was able to recover the file through LibreOffice. I had to convert it to ODT and then back to DOCX, but I got it back. Thanks, everyone, for the help.

I don't know how to mark it as solved.


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## ammylakai (Jun 9, 2015)

*Re: Can't Recover Corrupt Word 2013 Document*



eagle_eyes said:


> I opened it in Notepad, and it was just a bunch of garbage.
> 
> Congratulation eagle_eyes!!!
> 
> Glad to know that you have fixed the problem with LibreOffice.


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## ammylakai (Jun 9, 2015)

*Re: Can't Recover Corrupt Word 2013 Document*



macropod said:


> Why? Opening a zip file (which is what a docx file is), is not likely to retrieve anything meaningful.
> 
> This is a well-known form of corruption, with a clearly-defined means of fixing it.


Thanks for guide but spywareDr has asked to open the file using notepad instead of opening a zip file.


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## macropod (Apr 11, 2008)

*Re: Can't Recover Corrupt Word 2013 Document*

Be that as it may, docx files are zip archives and Notepad _cannot _retrieve anything meaningful from such files. You'd actually get far more meaningful data from a docx file with the kind of corruption the OP reported by opening it as a zip file. Then, you'd be able to access all of the document's components - and view the xml files with Notepad, etc.


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## SpywareDr (Jun 15, 2013)

*Re: Can't Recover Corrupt Word 2013 Document*

Sorry, my mistake. *macropod* is correct. When you open a .doc*x* file, you'll see that the very first two characters in the file are *PK* indicating that it's actually a .zip file. So, you'd need to unzip it and then view the contents of the "_yourfilename.ext_\word\document.xml" file with Notepad. This is the file that will contain what you had typed into the .doc file.


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