Microsoft Office provides a repair option to repair MS Office files such as Word documents, Excel worksheets, PPTX files, etc. However, there is no guarantee of successful recovery of the files using the manual approach. Moreover, this will consume a lot of time as per the size of the file.
Use MS Office to Repair Word/Outlook/Excel/PowerPoint documents:
- Launch Office Excel, Word, or another program that supports the document you need to repair. For example – to repair a .doc/.docx file, open the Word program & for .xls/.xlsx file, open MS Excel, and so on.
- Now, go to the Filemenu and click on the Openoption.
- On your screen, click on the Browsebutton.
- Upload the document that you need to repair, select, and click on the small down arrowbutton near to Openbutton.
- Hit on the Open and Repairbutton to open & repair the document.
Apart from this, you can try other ways to manually repair MS Office documents which are as follows:
Volume Shadow Copy
In case you are using Windows 7 or the ultimate version of Windows Vista, then the built-in shadow copy may have an older & uncorrupted version of the file.
To search it, go to Explorer, right-click on the folder having the document and select Properties. You will find a ‘Previous versions’ tab, click on it. Now, you will see a list of entries in the folder.
Double-click on it and try to open the older version. Now, save it with a new name. Repeat this process with the later folder entries until you reach the point where the file got corrupted.
Undelete
As per the Office setup and history of the document, you may have backup or other copies of the file. For example, search for .WBK or .ASD files if there is a Word document.
Apart from this, hidden temporary files are created in Office apps with a copy of your document. So, you can locate your file from there. The copy gets deleted if you close the Office application. Then, you need to use Undelete tools to find old Office temporary files.
Check your assumptions
If the Office tells you that a file is corrupt and you can’t open it. There could be other explanations too. Your Office app may have some common issues. In case you face a problem in opening an office document, confirm it by opening other documents by creating a new one.
In case this will work then this means the original document is faulty and the application is working fine.
Maybe the issue is with Office. If this is the case, then you should try repairing the current installation by visiting the Control Panel, uninstalling the program, choosing Office, hitting Change, and choosing the Repair option. Then, re-install the entire package. Now, try to open your document again. Hopefully, this resolves the issue.
