I'm sorry if I've posted this in the wrong place, but at the moment I'm desperate for help.

I very stupidly deleted some files off my memory stick (I had to restore my computer, lost all my files, but saved them to my stick to return to the computer this evening) before I managed to get them back into my documents on my laptop.

I downloaded Smart Data Recovery and I have recovered the items that I lost (my UCAS statement, my CV and my sisters CV). I've restored the files to my documents and my UCAS statement and my sisters CV opened up fine, but my own CV wouldn't open in MS Word.

As soon as Word opens a window pops up titled "File Conversion- Leanne's CV"; select the encoding that makes your document readable: windows default, MS-DOS, other encoding. The preview below this shows a list of numbers and symbols- nothing really readable (the occasional "Sony Ericsson" in there [nothing to do with my CV]). And when I open the file there is 100+ pages of symbols.

A friend suggested opening the file in WordPad, but I had the same results as above. Is there any way I can convert this information back into my CV? Please, if you have any advice, could you help me? So far everybody I have asked for help has said "It's just a CV" but there is some very important information in there (for me, anyway).

All I know is once you delete a file it can be very hard to get back, & sometimes impossible. It could, as it appears to be in your case, corrupted, incomplete, or windows just doesn't know what to do with it. All I can think of is to try & open the file on another computer. I know this isn't what you want to hear but there might not be anything anyone can do. This is why: files are stored in different places usually in pieces on the hard drive (or memory stick, floppy, etc) & "linked" together by the operating system. Once a file is deleted the links are gone & the space is freed up in that the operating system now considers that little section on the drive (known as a sector) as available to put another file or another part of a file on it. If one of those sectors that your file was written on was over written by another file then your recovered file will be incomplete at best & perhaps unusable. That might be what happened & if it is there is nothing that can be done that I know of.