Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Ok, I've read through all these and I'm so lost it isn't funny, lol. Here's my situation:

My laptop likes to crash so once a month I back up everything onto my external hard drive. I simply re-download OpenOffice and have never had a problem opening any of my backed up files. Well, after repairing my most recent crash I plugged in my external to get a message saying that it needed to be formatted... After hours online I found a program that recovered all my lost files in the format (Recover My Files v5). All the mp3's, videos, and pics work just fine. Even downloaded program files are working. So, I tried to open my ODT files and got that "ASCII filter options" window, every option results in it being nothing more than "#######". Is there any saving my docs? (They aren't important to anyone but me, I write when I get an urge and they're files I've been working on for years. Since I backed them up on my external I didn't back them up anywhere else...)

Thanks for your time!

Do I understand that you formatted your external drive? This is a process similar to erasing a page of pencil writing from your scratchpad. Once erased, such a page is nearly impossible to recover; you can understand that it might be possible to read the indentations in the page, but there is no guarantee that all or any can be read. Similarly with trying to recover the erased files.

Look to see if there are any .bak files; these may have some or all (or none) of the content. Look also in the temp(orary) directory of OpenOffice, given in OpenOffice /Tools /Options /OpenOffice.org : paths. Rename any files there to type .odt and see if they will open for you.

Yeah, I had to format it but we used that program and recovered all the files that had been there before the format. I don't understand why all the other files work just fine except for the odt files.

Nothing is in the backup file folder

You have to read the detailed instructions with any of these programs. The OpenOffice files are compressed archives of a number of files, and might be recovered as type .zip. If so, just rename then to type .odt/.ods etc, and see will they open.

Sadly, quite nothing to do, see: 22 pages term paper replaced with pound signs.
Power shortage is a common root cause of such problem. And never work directly on an external HD. AOO is very sensitive to such failure on USB link. Better save on your HD and then move the file with the file browser. If something goes wrong, you still have the file.