WD: MacWord 5.x and Earlier: How to Restore a Corrupt Document

ID: Q70755

The information in this article applies to:

SUMMARY

Below are two techniques that may help you recover a corrupt document in Word for the Macintosh.

MORE INFORMATION

Word Versions 5.0 and 5.1

It is sometimes possible to retrieve the text of a corrupt document using the Find File function in 5.0 and 5.1.

NOTE: Formatting will be lost.

Use the following process:

1. From the File menu, choose Find File.

2. In the Search window, select the proper Drives/Location of the document. 

   In the File Types list, select Readable Files. Choose OK.
3. In the Find File dialog box, set the View to Contents. Scroll through 
   the list of shown files and select (click once) the name of the document
   you are trying to reopen.
4. In the preview window (if the file contents appear), select the text, 
   and from the Edit menu, choose Copy. Close the Find File window.
5. In a new document, choose Paste from the Edit menu. The selected text 
   from the Find File window should appear.

Word Versions 4.0, 5.0, and 5.1

When a corrupt document causes Word to stop, the document can usually be opened as a text file. To do this, the file type of the document must be changed to TEXT, and then the document can be opened in Word, as follows:

1. Start any application or desk accessory (DA) that can change the file 

   type of a document, such as ResEdit, Filetools, or FileManager.
2. Change the file type of the corrupt document from WDBN to TEXT.

3. Quit the application or DA and save the changes to the document.

4. Open the document with Word.

This method will cause all formatting in the document to be lost, and many "garbage" characters (corrupt text) will be included in the text. The document will contain the text from the last full save with any recent changes appended to the end.

Versions of Word later than 4.0b cannot be used for this procedure because of changes made to facilitate file transfers with Microsoft Word for Windows. Instead of looking at the file type of the document to check whether it is in normal format or a text format, later versions of Word look at the information at the beginning of the file. A file editor can be used to change the first 2 bytes of a file to allow these versions of Word to open the document. Change either the first or the second byte of a file to be anything except what it currently is.

Additional query words: 3.0 3.01 3.02 4.0 5.0 5.10 macword macword5 macword5 

Platform          : MACINTOSH
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: July 9, 1998