corrupt docx

[saturdaygig]

My son created a lengthy docx using word 2007 but only saved it to a memory stick. Word says its corrupt and won't open it, but I'd like to see if there's anything I can rescue.
I can open in notepad and it looks like this

PK   ! Ꮏ�
)  [Content_Types].xml ¢(* ´â€�KOÂ@…÷&þ‡f¶â€*¸0ÆPXøX*‰˜¸¦·0q^â„¢{Aù÷ÞhÅ’Â�E6Mšæ~çÜ3§3¿9›* ¡ ¾ƒ¼/2ð:â€�ÆÃ�ñ4½ë]Å*IùRÙÃ*¡k@1Â�ž§ë˜ñ´ÇB,ˆâ•â€�¨Ã*æ!‚ç/UHN¿¦¹ŒJ¿¨9Èó~ÿBêÃ* <õ¨fˆÑðÂ�

and plenty more. Is this some sort of xml that I can decode somehow?

[photolady]

See if Recuva can retrieve it, then you can save to your documents folder or desktop and see it you can open it from there.

http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

[saturdaygig]

No, unfortunately that doesn't work. Recuva looks for deleted files not corrupt ones so it doesn't find anything to do. The file in question isn't missing, its corrupted.

[SpywareDr]

If the first two characters in a file are "PK", it indicates that it's a .ZIP file.

[SuperSparks]

I generally use a Hex Editor to try and rescue a corrupt file - if there is any plaintext in there, you can usually extract it and paste it in Notepad at least.

This should do the job, and the price is right, though I've not tried this particular one:

http://www.hhdsoftware.com/free-hex-editor

[saturdaygig]

Thanks supersparks, that's the sort of thing I had in mind. No plain text in there to work with though unfortunately.

[SpywareDr]

What happens if you temporarily add a ".epub" extension to it (without the quotes) and then double-click it in Windows Explorer? If it opens and you see a mess of .XML files inside, he may have saved it as an .epub file. (Which is .xml's and more inside of a .zip file).

BTW, the "PK" at the beginning of all .zip files stands for Phil Katz. (PKZIP, PKARC, PKXARC, PKWARE). He died in 2000 at age 37.

[saturdaygig]

my pc doesn't even recognise epub as a valid file type. I did try renaming it to .zip but it wasn't a valid archive either. I think we're done for. A lesson learned for sure.

[jdc2000]

My rule is to always save to the hard drive first, then copy to removable media.

[saturdaygig]

That's my rule too. Indeed on work I've spent some time on, its backed up to a second hard drive as well. But this is a 17 year old we speak of.