[Solved] How to recover my corrupted file?

[sergeH]

I've read through these pages and understand the steps I need to take, but finding the problem in an xml-file is where I lack the knowledge.

Could someone please try to help me by having a look at the attached file, made in LibreOffice? I get a message from LibreOffice about the file being corrupt and Libreoffice offers to repair, unfortunately without succes.

Renaming to zip and extracting works fine, and the content.xml-file seems intact. The file contains a fuel log I've been keeping and wanted to update after a couple of months.

Thanks in advance

[acknak]

I get the same thing: the archive seems to be damaged & contains corrupt data.

However, the content.xml portion seems intact. I just copied it into a new, empty spreadsheet and it opens for me. You may want to perform that operation yourself, as the empty spreadsheet I used will have locale-specific settings that are not correct for you (or for your content).

[sergeH]

Thanks a lot, it works perfectly! If I had known it was that easy...

[Hagar Delest]

That's the advantage of an open standard and human readable...
Thanks ODF!

[bkorb]

Thank you. A couple of issues tho:

1. there was no error message when the file was saved, and yet there was no visible text when I reopened.
2. If OpenOffice sees that there is nothing to display, but the content.xml is large, it could be bright enough to suggest an automated recovery that basically goes through what is suggested here. Most folks (me included) don't like going through a panic and then googling the web to work out the intricate dance required to recover our file.
3. After this exercise, there was a lot of formatting gone, but that is much more easily repaired.

Again, thank you for the precise instructions.

[John_Ha]

For others searching the forum see also [Hint] How did I fix my ODT file.

The following may also be useful:

If you are lucky, you might be able to un-delete some of the temporary files which Writer wrote while you were editing the .odt file, and then deleted when you closed Writer. Act quickly - they risk being overwritten the longer you leave it. Note that this only works if you were editing a .odt file - it does not work if you were editing a .doc file.

Edit: See Using Recuva to un-delete Writer temporary files for help recovering the temporary files which Writer wrote while you were editing the document, and then deleted when Writer was closed. The post has been extensively updated [June 2016] to show how AutoRecovery files can be un-deleted for .odt files; for files which have never been saved; and for .doc files.

Using RECUVA to un-delete Writer temporary files which are now deleted

Another on RECUVA

These may also be helpful.

Using 7-ZIP

Inside an odt file

Hints on how to prevent it happening

Always set AutoRecovery to save a copy of the file every few minutes while you are working on it - it protects you against things like power cuts, OS freezes etc. Tools > Options > Load/Save > General ...

Always??? set Create a backup copy to ON - this keeps the previously saved version of the file fred.odt as fred.bak in the Backup folder. Tools > Options > Load/Save > General ... The Backup folder location is shown by Tools > Options > OpenOffice > Paths ... You may need to switch on Show hidden files (Control Panel > Folder Options > View ...) to be able to see the folder and its contents.

Why the ??? Because you should remember that highly_personal.bak will still be in the Backup folder long after you have deleted highly_personal.odt!!!