[Hint] How did I fix my ODT file

[acknak]

... I found my file was still there, along with its size (3.7 MB), but its contents had been all turned to a long series of hashes. ...

Sorry to say, your file contains 3.7Mb of nothing but zeros--there's no useful information there to recover.

[John_Ha]

If you are exceptionally lucky, you might be able to un-delete the temporary files created by AOO. See this post for instructions.

[monacooo]

I'm in the same boat, been reading around and found this thread. I'm on Windows 7 Pro. Changing the filename to end in .zip didn't fix it (neither winrar, windows zip or 7zip would open it.)

The first post appears to be pertaining to linux, but I don't use that. The good news is my file is not full of zeroes or ###

I'm attaching it here - is it salvageable?

[John_Ha]

monacooo
I am sorry but your file appears to be corrupted beyond repair. It would not open with 7-ZIP, and while WinZip detected it was faulty and "fixed" it, the "fixed" file was zero bytes long. All data has been lost.

If you open a normal AOO (or ZIP) file with Notepad, the first two characters are always PK. Your files does not have PK as the first characters. I believe that utilities which fix ZIP files do so by searching for the first PK and deleting all which precedes it; and then searching for the End_Of_File marker or PKZip closing data, and deleting all which follows it.

î˜I!/‚YáH›‚¢ ¤8?i͖ﾈáÔ–`ÑŽi,‚nY >>> your file

PK  ”fäD^ >>> normal AOO file

Can you remember what happened which might have caused this?

[dawidf]

Please help me fix this ODT file. File is too much so I uploaded it: https://mega.co.nz/#!1kFyxKIB!9nGuMJhb2 ... 2rbmrmj4lA

[John_Ha]

I am sorry to have to tell you that the file is full of zeros - there is no information in it and all your information is lost.

Can you remember what happened to cause the problem? In particular

1 were you editing a .doc or a .odt file?
2 had you saved the file before? Or had you created a new document, added a lot of content, and then this happened?
3 Do you have Tools > Options > Load/save set to AutoSave?
4 Do you have Tools > Options > Load/save set to save a backup copy?
5 Was you file stored on a USB memory stick? A RAM disk?
6 Did you close Writer, then start Writer again very quickly?
7 Did you save the file, and then close Writer very quickly?

My guess is that Writer had reserved space for the file, but crashed or the PC crashed before the contents were written to the file. It would be good to know so we could warn people what causes this problem.

How to minimise the effect of its happening it in future.

1 Always take a backup of changed files every day.

2 Always set AutoRecovery to save a copy of the file while you are working on it - it protects against things like power cuts, OS freezes etc. Tools > Options > Load/Save > General

3 Always set Create a backup copy to ON - this keeps the previously saved version of the file. Tools > Options > Load/Save > General

4 Do not be over quick to power down or hibernate your computer

5 Be very careful if you save to a USB stick - be sure to Eject it safely.

Why? In order speed up PC when talking to slow things like memory sticks, Windows writes the data to a high speed buffer, and then copies the data slow-time to the USB stick. If you pull it out before the buffer has been written, you lose that data. See Safely remove devices from your computer for more information. I think Windows 7 can be set up so as to not to use the write buffer, and always write direct to the USB stick, but I forget how.

[John_Ha]

Please help me fix this ODT file. File is too much so I uploaded it: https://mega.co.nz/#!1kFyxKIB!9nGuMJhb2 ... 2rbmrmj4lA

There is something very strange about this .odt file.

When I downloaded it, I was able to copy it from ...\Downloads to the desktop, and open it with HxD, my hex editor. But I could not edit it, nor could I delete the copied file, nor delete the file in ...\Downloads. When I r-click > Properties it just hanged. I eventually got it (or a copy of it) to r-click > Properties, and it said that it had no security information. At one point, the copy in my ...\Downloads folder said it came from another computer and was blocked, so I unblocked it, but I still could not delete it. I finally deleted it by using AVG to shred the file. I also think the r-click > Properties may have been taking many (20+) seconds to respond, so it might not have hanged, and just been slow. CPU was running at 80%.

Does anyone have any ideas what this means? My guess is that the file was corrupted during the Windows creation process.

[RoryOF]

I got only hashes from it when opening in Writer. Did AVG report anything funny about it? Might it have the wrong file type? I don't think there is anything in it, so only worth examining out of interest, not with hope of recovery.

The usual advice for the OP - check OpenOffice backup and temp folders, pointed to by /Tools /Options /OpenOffice : Paths. rename any .bak files to .odt, and any arbitrary file names to .odt and see if they have content. Also run a recovery utility such as Recuva or Photorec to see if a deleted temporary file can be found.

[acknak]

... There is something very strange about this .odt file. ...

My guess is that it has something to do with the hosting site. Mega (from what little I know) depends on some processing in the browser. So it may have had your browser doing something with the file after it had finished downloading and therefore locked the file to prevent changes while it was working with the file.

Mega is a reputable site--as far as I've heard; it's been in the news a lot--so I don't think it's anything sinister.

[John_Ha]

Mega is a reputable site--as far as I've heard; it's been in the news a lot--so I don't think it's anything sinister.

acknak
I am sure it isn't sinister but I should have explained myself better by saying "My guess is that the poster's file was corrupted during the Windows file-creation process when the poster's Writer failed to create the file properly".

[acknak]

Ok, I'm not sure how that would explain the file acting strangely on your computer. Or did I just catch the wrong train?

[John_Ha]

Ok, I'm not sure how that would explain the file acting strangely on your computer.

I was thinking that if Windows didn't write the proper metadata to the file when the file was created (owner, access rights etc) then it could explain why I couldn't delete it - I didn't have any rights over the file. Presumably you could delete it OK under Linux.

I have just downloaded it again. If I r-click the file, it hangs with 80-100% CPU at the r-click, and I never get the pop-up menu to choose Properties.

Edit: After about 60 seconds I get the Properties dialogue which says the file is blocked. I unblock it, but the CPU stays at 80% - 100%. When I try to delete it I get a pop-up Preparing to recycle and it hangs.

[RoryOF]

I downloaded it (Xubuntu)), renamed to .zip and it opened in Archive Manager with no problems.

[floris v]

All zeroes in Vista.

[Ldb]

from the attached file I believe all content is lost (hex dump displays zero all over)
Am I right, or is the fix easy for you? please help

[John_Ha]

Welcome to the forum.

I am sorry to say that all data has been lost - the file is full of zeros. See below where I opened the file with the (free) Hex editor HeX

Be sure to set Tools > Options > Load / Save > General to Always create backup copy (when you save the file, it keeps the previous one as a .bak file); and set AutoSave to, say, every 5 minutes.

Edit: Edited to add HeX editor information

[avrio]

Hi Guys...

After spending a few hours trying to recover a spreadsheet generated with Libre Office still can't get it fixed...
Am having the content.xml error - @ 2,75270 working on a mac and have followed some of the various fixes - downloaded some of the xml programs after first starting off with just opening it in notepad - tries the w3schools checker - no error found...

I'm inferring that there is something fairly obvious to familiarity with xml code but I have little understanding of what to look for...got as far down as the error is telling me the characters number but finding it and then understanding it is beyond me.

I see that acknak and my compatriot RoryOF are and have been continuously helpful in recovering files here and I'm asking if you could help me with the attached...

...am just lost in it and unable to think of anything further except - start over...

Cheers Guys.

[acknak]

Try this one:

[avrio]

Thank you so much acknak.
I must say - hat off to you for maintaining and helping out so many people on a thread that's been running since 2008!!
Dedication.

[acknak]

Thanks! Glad I can help.

[silvia.o90]

Dear acknak,

i found this discussion after a google research (I'm a young italian girl, please don't blame me for my terrible english!! )

Had today the same problem, lost my phd research

Don't know what to do... pretty desperate.
Could you give me an hint?

Thank you in advance, file is down here

https://www.sendspace.com/file/e1sapg

[acknak]

Sorry, there's no recoverable data in your file: it's all zeroes.

[John_Ha]

Had today the same problem, lost my phd research

If you are very lucky, you might be able to recover some of the now deleted temporary files which AOO was using while you were working on the document. See Re: User error. Contents of Writer file deleted. for how to do it.

Note that this will may not work if you are using a SSD (Solid State Disk) because SSDs clear all "deleted" files in the background although it does take some time to do so, so you may be lucky.

Edit: Edited to correct error

[gorgjan]

Hey acknack i tried some of your tips but couldnt recover anything. I wonder if you could help me out, i lost it when i recovered it from a usb when my pc crashed.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/8jc4nt

thanks in advance!

[John_Ha]

i lost it when i recovered it from a usb when my pc crashed.

Welcome to the forum.

I am sorry but there is no data in the file - it is all zeros.

[RoryOF]

Just to confirm, I got nothing from it either.

[Giorgos1981]

Hi guys!

I have a problem with a corrupted odt file. I had it open and saved then I got a blue screen on my laptop and since then i cannot see the content of the file which ihappens to be in greek by the way. Good news is that on search results on windows 8, I found the file with a preview of the first lines of the content. If anyone could help I would be really , really grateful since I tried everything I could think of and this is my last hope here. The file is on that link https://www.mediafire.com/?cljuwu5ujuel1ft

Thank you so much in advance!

Giorgos.

[thomasjk]

Unfortunately all I see is ##################. The entire file is corrupt. Hopefully you have a backup. Check the user profile https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/v ... 74&t=12426 for filename.bak.

[Giorgos1981]

Thank you very much for your effort Tom,

Unfortunately no back up . But as I wrote, when I search on the file on my pc on windows 8, on the results i get re preview of the first lines of the document . So,
my question is ,since we can see some lines of the file even on preview, should not this information be stored inside the file and therefore perhaps we could extract it somehow?

Thanks again,

Giorgos.

[John_Ha]

The file icon you can see is a small (181 x 256 pixels) PNG image stored in the Thumbnails folder in the unzipped odt file. While it shows the shape of the words on the page, the resolution is too poor to allow the words to be read.