How can I repair a corrupted .odt file?

[computernoobie]

Hi,

As my nickname says, I'm really a noob with computers.
So when I have a problem I usually can't fix it myself.
My girlfriend has been working on a schooltask for weeks,
unfortunately a few days before she has to hand in the task the file has been corrupted.
So we can't open the file anymore.
Could somebody help me get some of the content back within the file?
That would be awesome, saving my gf a lot of time and stress.

Thanks in Advance

[RoryOF]

I got nothing from it - I think the computer was closed down before the file was correctly written.

The file size is such that it is very close to the minimum file size of an OO .odt file, so any content enclosed in this file (not the uncorrupted original) will be only a very few words.

[computernoobie]

Thanks for your quick reply RoryOF.
That was exactly what I was thinking, that this file doesn't probably contain anything.
How couldn't the file be written if my gf was working day in, day out on the document?
Do you have any idea how I could perhaps recover the original file with its content?
It's weird because I can't find it anywhere in my computer.

[RoryOF]

To try and recover the 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 was being used) and see if they contain the 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 the data (or not

[John_Ha]

See Using Recuva to un-delete Writer temporary files for help recovering the temporary files which Writer wrote while you were editing the .odt file, and then deleted when Writer was closed.

[orcmid]

Hi,

the file has been corrupted.
So we can't open the file anymore.
Could somebody help me get some of the content back within the file?
That would be awesome, saving my gf a lot of time and stress.

Thanks in Advance

John_Ha brought this problem to an issue on the AOO Bugzilla, where we are looking into file corruption cases. A deeper analysis is in the two comments here: https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=126869#c14.

There is no prospect of recovering any data from this particular file. It is also unusual in that the beginning of a larger .odt file has been lost. It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario where this would happen directly out of Apache OpenOffice. It doesn't appear to be a premature shut-down situation.