Hi all

I accidentally ran a disk recovery utility on my laptop and lost all my data. I have managed to get most of it back via a data retrieval software called "get data back" , unfortunately when I try to open most of the recovered documents, I'm getting a message that says the document is in a format not recognised by windows and i shud install a converter to convert the document....... or something to that effect. After doing that, when I try to open the document, I just get jibberish.

Before the "accident" my laptop was using Office 2007, but I installed Office 2003 now, cos I don't have the 2007 cd anymore. Can installing Office 2007 resolve the problem? By the way I can see the documents when I open the folders, but just can't read them.

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Chris

Did you install updates, AND compability pack from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923505?

No I didn't.... I'll do that and get back to you all!

Hi,

Sorry I have had no luck, I still can't open my documents. I'm still getting a "File conversion....... Select Encoding......" message. Help... I really need to access my documents!!!!

Thanks

This is strange, because MS Compatibility Pack should work just for cases like yours.
My only advice would be to try http://www.openoffice.org
Open Office, and MS Office both use XML format.

I tried openoffice too with no joy. I tried another software called "Word fix", which claims to able to open corrupt msword documents, but I can only get the demo version, which only opens parts of a document, to open the whole document, I need to buy the full version, but at $300 per copy it's a bit on the expensive side (and I live in Zambia, Africa where these things are not easy to get) and I'm not too sure it actually works. So I'm still open to all suggestions.....

Try free IBM Lotus, then http://symphony.lotus.com/software/l...hony/home.jspa
If that doesn't work either, maybe those files ARE corrupted afterall.