Corrupt ODT - missing local header?

[amigaboy]

Hi. I learned to my dismay this morning that an ODT file i've been using the past several months in NeoOffice on my Mac has somehow become corrupt, and for whatever (possibly stupid, I admit) reason, the auto-backup in NeoOffice is off, unfortunately, so no backup.

I tried several solutions, including renaming a copy as a zip and then trying to open it with archivers (both on Mac and PC/Parallels) but I can't extract the 'content.xml' file -

Winzip says this:
Unable to find the local header for content.xml.
Severe Error: Cannot find a local header.


Ultimate Zip says this:
Error: content.xml Bad offset to local header


and in trying it in Terminal on the Mac, I got this (I had renamed the file 'bad1.zip'):

Archive: bad1.zip
End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not
a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the
latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
the last disk(s) of this archive.


I then downloaded and installed the newest Apache OpenOffice and tried opening the file with that, but it first gave me the filetype dialog (like NeoOffice was) and then complained the file was corrupt and couldn't be repaired, thus not openable.


I also tried an esoteric freeware tool intended to repair DOCX files - presumably similar to the ODF format in that it's a disguised zip full of XML documents - but that tool looks for a 'document.xml' - which I guess is what Microsoft calls their main data file in DOCX - whereas it doesn't support 'content.xml' (the zip archivers I was working with won't let me rename the content.xml file, presumably due to the missing header?)


So.....here I am - thoughts? Is there a way to replace a missing local file header like that? I know what hex editors are but have never used one, is that the way to do it? But, what would I put in there even in that event?

amigaboy
Seattle

[thomasjk]

This link maybe http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... f=7&t=1532

[amigaboy]

Yes, that post was where I got the idea on the rename/command line 'bad1.zip' attempt, sadly that and the other ideas in that post didn't work/weren't applicable.....

amigaboy