Cannot open OO Writer bcs ASCII Filter Options appears

[res]

I cannot open OpenOffice Writer I created and yesterday and ASCII Filter Options appears that I do not change only press 'ok'. It opens other window that 'particular Document is locked up by unknown user' and I can either 'open as writing-locked' or 'to open working copy'. It does not matter which option I do press the text disappears and hash tags lines appear. other document from the same day I can open.

[FJCC]

Your document is corrupted. If you post it here, someone may be able to repair it. After you click Post Reply, there is an upload attachment tab just below the box where you type a response.

[robleyd]

See also this post discussing files filled by hash tags and possible recovery options.

[John_Ha]

There is no hope of recovering data from the file.

See [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files for instructions on how to identify and un-delete the temporary files Writer wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. You should be able to recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it, or as it was when it was last saved with AutoRecovery.

You may also find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located in, but which have since been deleted.

[res]

See also this post discussing files filled by hash tags and possible recovery options.

Thank you for the advice. I even have downloaded Recuva sw but obviously there is nothing to recover. At the end I got know from your entry what is the reason of corrupted document. Bye

[res]

Hi, I tried all the advices but obviusly no back-up docs, no temporary docs available. I tried with recovery sw /recuva/ as well. Nothing.
Can someone pls. recover this file for me? thank y in advance

[robleyd]

I'm sorry but there is nothing in the file to recover; it consists entirely of null characters.

[res]

I'm sorry but there is nothing in the file to recover; it consists entirely of null characters.

So is obviously corrupted. I had there Kuba travel programs with trekking, etc.so for sure many information. thanks

[John_Ha]

So is obviously corrupted. I had there Kuba travel programs with trekking

Correct.

See [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files for detaild instructions on how to recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it, or as it was when it was last saved with AutoRecovery. You may also find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located in, but which have since been deleted.

There are also detailed instructions for how to un-delete the temporary files Writer wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. This will recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it.

[res]

Hello,
it happen again that I cannot open the document OO Writer bcs ASCII Filter Options appears. Again! I lost this way maybe 4th document. But on this one I worked 2 days - detailed travel plan.
Does anybody know if someone is working to fix this bug?

[RoryOF]

This is not a bug - it is caused by user error, usually by the computer being powered down before internal housekeeping was finished. Always use the formal computer shut down procedure and wait a few seconds for the internal buffers in the hard drive to flush to disk before powering off or snapping a laptop lid shut.

[John_Ha]

it happen again that I cannot open the document OO Writer bcs ASCII Filter Options appears. Again! I lost this way maybe 4th document. But on this one I worked 2 days - detailed travel plan.

Please describe exactly what you did when this happened. Be aware that AOO keeps on writing to its files for a period after the blue line has stopped crossing the screen.

Are you closing the laptop lid too quickly?

Are you saving the file and then quickly trying to re-open the file before it has finished saving?

Are you saving on a network attached disk (NAS), or to the cloud, or to a server? In this case AOO can keep writing to its files for many seconds after the blue line has stopped crossing the screen.

Are you saving to a USB stick?

As an experiment, Save the file ... and then do nothing for about 10 seconds. Does it still happen?

[res]

Hello John, hello Rory,
I worked yesterday on three OO Writer documents. They are created and saved on C: disk and already several days. Prior going sleep I saved the updates (waited till savings are finished) but unfortunately have not closed all documents. As I had few websites opened (I needed for the finishing the documents) I put my notebook in Standby status to continue early morning finishing the documents. I just selected Standby and closed Laptop.
Today early morning I opened laptop (screen) but could not start the notebook. So I had to shut down and newly start. I could recover websites but as I tried to open the first document (I worked for 2 days on) it again opened with window message "ASCII Filter Options" and as I clicked further the documents was full of hashtags. Other 2 documents from yesterday I could open and they are Ok. Only the one document which is most important is not ok.
I saved corrupted file and tried to open it several times with the same result. I sent it to my partner if he cannot open it in Microsoft office document but he cannot.
Thank you.
Regards,

[John_Ha]

I saved the updates (waited till savings are finished) but unfortunately have not closed all documents ... I put my notebook in Standby status ... I just selected Standby and closed Laptop.
Today early morning I opened laptop (screen) but could not start the notebook. So I had to shut down and newly start.

Thank you for your detailed description.

I need to do some tests to try and replicate what you did but I think the problem arose at the "I could not start the laptop. So I had to shut down and newly start." step, where I think shutting down caused it.

Saving the document was correct - it does not, or should not, matter that you left the document open because the saved document is safely written to the disk. That being said, it is always best to shut things down properly and completely because you then know you will be OK.

You say "standby". There are two types:

With Sleep, the CPU stops working but the memory stays powered and keeps all its contents. When you restart, the CPU starts again and, as the memory is identical to what it was when you put it to sleep, the PC begins immediately.

With Hibernate, there is a delay while the PC writes the contents of the memory to disk. The CPU then stops and the laptop powers off completely. When you restart, the CPU starts and there is a delay while it copies the memory stored on disk back into the memory. When this has been done, the PC starts. This takes many seconds and is much slower than Sleep.

Which were you using? You can check by Control Panel > Power options.

Assume you were editing fred.odt which was 10kBytes, and then added some text to it. When you saved the added text it was saved into the original fred.odt, which is now 20 kBytes, and is safely stored on the disk. A new temporary file is created which is a copy of the 20 kBytes fred.odt. The temporary file is stored in the temporary folder as something like C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\svct5ltr.tmp\svct7pik.tmp and is an exact copy of the 20 kBytes fred.odt.

As you can see, if you were using Sleep, you would have lost the memory contents when you shutdown and restarted. However, even if you did this, I cannot see why the 20 kByte fred.odt seems to be broken - it should be perfect. Yet it seems to have been overwritten and corrupted. That has me very confused.

Did AOO offer to recover the file when it started? I am wondering if there a process where, when AOO starts, it somehow thinks it has to write the file to the disk, so it overwrite the good file already stored safely on the disk with rubbish?

A thought - are you using a traditional, rotating hard disk? Or a Solid State Disk (SSD)?

When a file is full of ###### there is no hope - it means the file is completely corrupted and full of NUL characters - there is no user data in it.

[res]

Hello
it does happen again to me
I cannot open OpenOffice Writer I created and yesterday and ASCII Filter Options appears that I do not change only press 'ok'. It opens other window that 'particular Document is locked up by unknown user' and I can either 'open as writing-locked' or 'to open working copy'. It does not matter which option I do press the text disappears and hash tags lines appear. other document from the same day I can open.
Can someone try to recover my document?
regards, res

[RoryOF]

If you are being told that the file is "locked" _and_ you also get the ASCII filter message, this is a certain sign that you powered down your computer (or closed a laptop's lid) before the internal housekeeping had been written to disk. Use the methods described in
[Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files
to attempt to recover your file.

[robleyd]

You might also consider using Timestamped backup so you have more than one possible file which you can recover if things go bad.

[res]

Hi RoryOF

I tried and I hope correctly but it did not helped. My computer could not start after the lid down so I have to restart and then I could not open the .odt file even before putting Notebook to stand by status I closed the .odt file.
Can I send someone the file if can some expert recover it?
Regards

[RoryOF]

There will be nothing in your file; your best hope is to download and run PhotoRec and let it uncover deleted files.

[res]

I downloaded BUT Windows Defender SmartScreen stoped this PhotoRec App as this put my PC on risk.

[John_Ha]

Now you have to take a decision. Do you believe Windows Defender?

[mco]

I cannot open OpenOffice Writer I created and ASCII Filter Options appears. When I tried to open it all came gibberish (codes?). This document is very important, any advice would be appriciated.

[RoryOF]

A file that opens as ### is damaged - possibly because of over-hasty power off of the computer before the internal buffers in the hard drive had written to disk.

You may be able to recover a previous version of the file - see [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete AOO temporary files for detailed instructions on how to

a) use Previous Versions (W7 and later) to recover previous versions of the file ;

b) recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it, or as it was when it was last saved with AutoRecovery;

c) find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located in, but which have since been deleted;

d) un-delete the temporary files AOO wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. This will recover your file as it was when you last opened or you last saved it.

[robleyd]

For important, in fact all, documents it is good to have a backup strategy. You may wish to consider installing and using the Time stamped backup extension in addition to your normal system backup for future peace of mind.

[Bill]

I downloaded BUT Windows Defender SmartScreen stoped this PhotoRec App as this put my PC on risk.

Using Firefox, I highlighted "Windows Defender SmartScreen" in your post, right-clicked the highlighted text and selected "Search Google for..." The first hit was "How to get past Windows Defender SmartScreen in Windows 10". I leave it to you to determine if this could be helpful.