How can I recover an RTF file that comes up blank in Word?

microsoft-word documents rtf

7,099

Solution 1

try opening and saving the corrupted file in wordpad.

In linux,once wine installed, using the command

  wine wordpad

i have managed to open a corrupted file properly and retrieve it this way.

Solution 2

I had a similar issue on a user's PC at work.

Try deleting their profile's normal.dot file.

All Office applications should be closed before you delete the file. Sometimes these files are hidden; when you search for normal.dot you need to select Advanced Options and tick the box to Search hidden files and folders.

When you reopen Word, the normal.dot file will be recreated.

7,099

bhaskar

Former Community Manager at Stack Exchange (August 2013-November 2017). My posts from before or after that time period (and, like, a bunch of the ones from during it, too) should not be considered "official" in any way. Joel: I have all these opinions ... and no outlet for them! Josh: Have you tried yelling them at the Internet? Joel: Almost exclusively! And yet problems still persist! -"The Grand Opining", HijiNKS ENSUE, by Joel Watson "On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -Charles Babbage Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. -Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

bhaskar over 1 year

How can I recover an RTF file that comes up blank in Word? I've tried copy-pasting its contents into a new document and opening it with Notepad. In Notepad, it shows up as a bunch of zeros and the formatting text for Word. I tried opening the file with a hex editor, too, but I'm not totally familiar with them and was unsure what to do next.
- Synetech about 13 years
  
  Is it a Word file (.DOC) as opposed to an RTF? Try opening it in a Word viewer. Try importing it to Google Docs or something.
- NReilingh about 13 years
  
  Have you exhausted all other program options, like OpenOffice? Maybe give the file to a Mac user and see if he can do anything with it.
- Admin about 13 years
  
  If it's showing up as zeroes in Notepad, without any content, it sounds like your SOL.
- Admin about 13 years
  
  Awesome, I'll check all these out. Hopefully something works. Thanks!
Johan Lundberg about 9 years

Cool. Wordpad opened my rtf, failed by both libre office and word