PC crashed my document is corrupted; showing just # symbol

[Mirhollio]

I have a HUGE problem an I need help ASAP! I am writing my final essay for school. My laptop battery is dead and when power cable was pluged out my laptop shutdown imediatley. when that happened I was working on my essay in OO. After opening previously sved openoffice writer essay I realized that somehow it managed to replace all the letters with # symbol. everything I wrothe has been replaced just with just # symbol. It's a 50 something page essay and I am about to explode. Is there any way to correct the corruped file. I tried opening it in windows office , online office - One drive and in PDF format, but it always says the same thing. Can not open the format of the file. Or file is corrupt. I saved the file in microsoft office 2003-2007 format and I dont know what to do. I have OO 4.1.2 and running it on windows 10. Thank you very much in advance. Sorry for my englih, not my primary language!

[RoryOF]

As the archive is damaged there is no point pursuing that path. To try and recover your file, you should as soon as possible look in the backup and temporary directories pointed to by /Tools /Options /OpenOffice : Paths. Rename any files in those to type .odt (or whatever file type you were using) and see if they contain your data. 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 soon as possible, with as little use of your computer as may be in the interim.

[Hagar Delest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Sadly, quite nothing to do I fear, see: 22 pages term paper replaced with pound signs.

Check the temporary folder of the system (see in OO Tools>Options>OO>Paths). If there are folders like sgmlf.tmp with a file having the same name inside, make a copy of that file, rename it in .odt and cross your fingers.

If you want to help fix this problem, you can also do this survey created for this very problem: Document Recovery Survey.