ASCII pop up destroyed my text

[HLesley]

I have been working on a document for about a week. I saved it as a Word doc (version 6) and have opened it successfully several times.

This time, however, I got the ASCII pop up window which showed the document has been saved as a Word 2003 document and when I opened it I got nothing but four pages of hashtags. I have tried most of the English text formats and still got nothing. Is there something I am missing? Or is there a way to retrieve an older version of the file? Or should I just give up and start again?

All help appreciated

[RoryOF]

Your file is damaged beyond repair, with no usable content.

Your file has been damaged, perhaps because of over hasty close down of the computer before internal housekeeping was complete. Examination will show that there is nothing usable in your damaged file.

Please see [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files for ways to try and recover any temporary Writer files that may still be on your computer.

If that doesn't help, then as soon as possible do the following:

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). Do this as a first priority; other use of the computer may overwrite any existing but deleted files and prevent their recovery. There is no guarantee that you will recover anything useful. You may need to rename any such files to type .doc.

Do the above soonest!

[John_Ha]

ASCII pop up destroyed my text

Not quite.

Your file is corrupted so your text has been lost.

Because the file is faulty, you get the ASCII pop-up.

[HLesley]

Thanks for replying, everybody. It was as I suspected. All is lost! I have now gone back to square one, and am saving my work as an .odt instead of a .doc

[John_Ha]

I ... am saving my work as an .odt instead of a .doc

Good idea. See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt.

[robleyd]

For future peace of mind, consider installing and using the Time stamped backup extension to make multiple backups of your documents.

[sbtgran]

The exact same thing happened to me, but it WAS saved as .odt! This happened 10/28/18 when my laptop computer froze. I had to unplug it then plug it back in. Is that why I can't recover my 6 pages of documenting my Keto summary? The 6 pages were on my desktop as well as on my task bar (?) at the bottom of my screen. Any chance of recovery or do I just start from today?

[RoryOF]

Please see [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files for ways to try and recover any temporary Writer files that may still be on your computer.

If that doesn't help, then as soon as possible do the following:

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). Do this as a first priority; other use of the computer may overwrite any existing but deleted files and prevent their recovery. There is no guarantee that you will recover anything useful. You may need to rename any such files to type .doc.

Do the above soonest!