Recover damaged Word files on imac PC

Sometimes, documents that Word cannot open can be successfully opened by the free LibreOffice Suite. I suggest you download and install the current LibreOffice, right-click on Rudulph.docx, and select Open with LibreOffice. If it does, then simply resave it as a Word 2010 - 365 Document (.docx), and then open that in Word.

Of course, there is always the possibility that if Rudolph.docx were open in Word at the time of the power outage, that it was irrevocably damaged when Word crashed. Word has to be configured in its Preferences to perform an autosave, and if that was not enabled, you didn't have a saved document (unless you manually saved it) at the time of the outage and the document contents would have been vaporized.

If Rudolph.docx does exist, and you configured Spotlight to index the drive for Documents, then the following Spotlight syntax should find Rudolph.docx somewhere on your startup drive. Basically, it is find any Word document that was created after (>) Dec. 1 2023.

kind:word created:>12/01/2023



Are you trying to open the file from within Word or by double clicking on the file? If you're just trying by double clicking on the doc try opening Word and then open the doc via the Open menu.

There's a free app, LibreOffice that can read Word document and save them back to Word format. If it can open the doc you can try to save/reanme the doc and see if it can be opened with work.

Pages can also open Word docs and export them as Word docs.

Here are a couple of Microsoft articles for attempting to recover damaged Word files. While they may make reference to the Windows versions of Word, there may be similar options for the macOS version of Word.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/word/damaged-documents-in-word

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/open-a-document-after-a-file-corruption-error-47df9d48-2165-4411-a699-1786ac734bc3

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/word/recover-lost-unsaved-corrupted-document

Can you right click on that Rudolph file and click on Get Info? What does Get Info tell you about this file?

Did you review the suggestions provided earlier by VikingOSX? I didn't see any indication that you tried those suggestions.

Not sure I understand how Get Info doesn't reveal anything for that file, though, unless it exists only in the cloud, like OneDrive or iCloud.

There are two approaches to the Finder Get Info menu item. A right-click (or control+left-click) on a file in Finder ( not in a File Open or Save panel) will display a Get Info menu item on the now open secondary menu. Apple ensures that it will open beneath any open window on the upper-left of your screen, and its favorite behavior is to hide behind an open browser. If that happens, just click on the Finder icon in the Dock to bring that Get Info panel frontmost.

Or, you can single, left-click on a filename in the Finder and then press option+cmd+i to open that Get Info window about middle screen over the top of any existing window. I prefer that to chasing down the first paragraph described Get Info panel.

mikeandpat99 wrote:

When I right click I do not get "GET INFO".

Try holding down the Control key then lift click the file. Right-click on Mac - Apple Support

As this points to MS Office, I'll be surprised if Apple Support is able to help with this. However, please keep us updated...especially if you discover a resolution.