Writer has replaced all words with symbols

[cooper101183]

I was working on my essay last night, I saved the file but when I went to open it this morning ACS11 filter options appeared, so I opened the file as read only and all the words were replaced with hashes. Every other document opens up fine except the one I need for my university work. Can anyone please help. I have tried opening the file with Microsoft Word, I did not have back up turned on as I didnt know about it until 15 minutes ago. I have tried renaming the user account but that doesnt work either

[RoryOF]

Look in the temporary folder given under /Tools /Options /OpenOffice.org : Paths. Rename and files with arbitrary names (sgthl.tmp sort of thing) to .odt and try to open them to see do they contain some/all of your lost file.

[cooper101183]

The temp folder is blank it must have cleared them when I rebooted

[cooper101183]

I have also tried Kernel repair but that just deletes the symbols and does not restore the words.

[RoryOF]

Rename your damaged .odt file to .zip and try to open it with winzip/7zip. Then look in Content.xml and you may find your unformatted text. But if it doesn't open, that's it!

[Hagar Delest]

Sadly, quite nothing to do, see: 22 pages term paper replaced with pound signs.
Any power shortage for example? It's a common root cause of such problem.

I hope you've a backup somewhere (have you checked the backup folder of the profile (see [Tutorial] The User Profile).

You can also try the shadow copies; here are the 2 links usually given by Bill here:
- Recover Files with Shadow Copies on Any Version of Windows Vista
- ShadowExplorer

You should upgrade to latest AOO 3.4.1, it seems there are less reports with that version.