How To Repair Word For Mac

Need to repair or fix a corrupt Word document? Sometimes when opening a Word document, you will give you an error stating that the document cannot be read because it is corrupt or because there is some other problem with the file. Word documents can become corrupt in a number of different ways, but usually it’s just a problem with the headers in the file and the data can be recovered most of the time. Here is a typical error message you might see when Word can’t open a document. “ Word was unable to read this document. It may be corrupt“ By default, Word shows you two possible ways to open a corrupt document: Open and Repair the file or open with Text Recovery converter. In addition to these two options, there are other tricks you can try inside Word to open a corrupt file.

You should definitely try all of these options before moving on to third party tools, etc. For testing purposes, I intentionally corrupted a Word document and then tried to repair it using all the different tools and methods mentioned below. I’ll point out the results for each recovery option. Unfortunately, there aren’t very many free ways to recover a Word document, as you’ll probably be able to tell when you perform a Google search. I’ll make sure to mention all the free options I could find before mentioning paid software.

To resolve this problem, follow steps below. Microsoft Word for Mac 2008 or Later Step 1: Quit all applications. On the Apple menu, click Force Quit.; Select an application in the 'Force Quit Applications' window.

Built-in Recovery Options Both of the built-in repair options mentioned above can be accessed via the File Open dialog. Click on File, then Open and then single click on the file you want to repair. Do not double-click on it, otherwise Windows will try to open it normally and you’ll just get an error message. Now instead of clicking on the Open button, click on the black arrow that is located on the right side of the button. You’ll see a bunch of extra options, one of them being Open and Repair. Word will attempt to repair the corrupt document and if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to view the file. How to have outlook for mac not download emails from the server free. In my simple test, Word was able to recovery my file completely, though it only contained about two pages of plain text.

Always try this option first as it does a pretty good job and doesn’t require any additional software. The second built-in feature is the recovery converter, which you can also access via the Open dialog. Most free user friendly photo editing software for mac. In the drop down box that says All Word Documents, go ahead and choose Recover Text from Any File. Word will attempt to recover any text it can from the file. In my test case, it failed and only returned a message stating that the file appears to be corrupt. Depending on the type of corruption that your file has suffered, your results will vary.

If neither of these two methods worked, you can try to insert the corrupt document into another Word doc. To do this, open a new file and then click on the Insert tab. Click on Object and then click on Object again from the dropdown. Click on the Create from File tab and then click the Browse button. Choose your corrupt Word file and see if it is able to insert the contents into the new document. In my test, Word could not insert the document into the current file. Instead, I got some strange error message stating that the program used to create the file was Word, but Word was not installed on my system!

Again, your results will vary, so give it a shot, but don’t expect much. Open File via Link This method is a bit convoluted, but it might work for you depending on the type of damage your document has sustained. Basically, we create a document, type any text into it, copy that text, then paste special that text to a new document as a link and finally update that link to point to the corrupt file rather than the original file. First, open a new Word doc and type in anything like “ My name is John.” and then save the document somewhere. Now select the text you just typed and copy it to the clipboard. You can select it and press CTRL + C or just right click on it and choose Copy.

Next, create a new Word document by going to File and then New. Choose blank document if asked. Now click on the small arrow on the Paste button and choose Paste Special.

Here you have to select Paste link and then choose either Formatted Text (RTF) or Unformatted Text. It doesn’t matter which one you pick. If you get any kind of error message when trying to paste the link, go ahead and close the new document, recopy the text and then create a new document again. We’re getting close to the end now. Right-click on the pasted link text, select Linked Document Object and then select Links. Click the Change Source button here and navigate to the directory where your corrupted file is located.