Document Totally Messed Up

[Urukagina]

So I spent several hours working on an important document which I needed today. Sure enough, I finally open it up to make whatever final preparations were needed, and everything is "####" as you can see in the image.
Any way to fix this or am I screwed?

[RoryOF]

You may have powered off your computer (or hibernated/slept it) before the hardware/software write buffers had flushed to disk.

The chances are minute that you will recover anything from the existing file.

To try and recover your file, you should look in the backup and temporary directories pointed to by /Tools /Options /OpenOffice : Paths. Rename any files in those to type .odt (or whatever file type you were using) and see if they contain your data. Download Recuva or PhotoRec (only one needed) and let it do an indepth recovery of deleted files on your computer. You may get a file containing some or all of your data (or not). Pending running Recuva/PhotoRec make as little use of your computer as possible to avoid overwriting any deleted file.

[Urukagina]

I made sure to save and close it before powering off. I usually leave things as they are, don't close; I've never had a problem. This was more important, so I tried playing safe.
I downloaded recuva. Nothing came of it.
I guess I'd better start researching again. Thanks for your suggestions, but after looking into them I fear nothing shall work.

[RoryOF]

Try unzipping the OpenOffice file and examining content.xml with a plain text editor (if it allows you into content.xml). You may have some usable content in that.
Also look in the directories pointed to by /Tools /Options /OpenOffice /Paths for Backups and Temporary files. In those directories rename any
files to type .odt and see if they contain your data or part of it.

Were you working to a USB key?

[John_Ha]

It may be too late now, but it might be worthwhile seeing checking out Using Recuva to un-delete Writer temporary files for help recovering the temporary files which Writer wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted when Writer was closed.