ASCII Filter Options and #####

[RegCV]

Hello!
I have a Problem with this corrupted odt document (only ~10 pages text with commentary). In the OOWriter I am asked to select the ASCII Filter Options and the document shows only #####. I already tried my best at recovering the document (no previous version, no back up, no valid zip archive) but I have to give up. Could anybody please try to save the text?
Thanks!

[RoryOF]

I got nothing from either of your files, each showing a different level of corruption. I suggest you download Recuva and see if it can find any deleted intermediate files.

[John_Ha]

Neither file has any user data.

Can you please describe what happened to cause this problem with the two files so we can understand how it occurred.

Your only hope is to see [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files for

a) detailed instructions on how to recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it, or as it was when it was last saved with AutoRecovery.
b) how to find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located in, but which have since been deleted.
c) how to un-delete the temporary files Writer wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. This will recover your file as it was when you last opened or you last saved it and is probably your best hope.

[RegCV]

Thanks for trying. My computer crashed due to no electricity (without battery) but I thought saving the file was completed before the crash. I saved the edited odt more than once during the writing process but I could not find any previous versions. As I restarted the computer and tried to open the odt it was corrupted.

[RoryOF]

Follow John_Ha's link to possibly find deleted files containing some or all of your file.

[John_Ha]

My computer crashed due to no electricity (without battery) but I thought saving the file was completed before the crash.

In that case you should be able to find the temporary files as the folders containing them should still be there.

You will be looking for files with names something like C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\sv2ju1mk.tmp\sv2ju21c.tmp where " xxxxxx " is your username.

[RegCV]

I already tried that but this just leads me to the (corrupted) tmp file I uploaded in my original post. So I guess there is no chance of recovery and I have to start writing from scratch. But thanks for all your time and help!

[John_Ha]

I already tried that but this just leads me to the (corrupted) tmp file I uploaded in my original post.

Carefully read the Tutorial from start to finish, following all the suggested methods, especially those looking for deleted original or temporary files. You should find something.

[kwndroid]

Wife was working on a document, spent 22 billable hours on it. It was a .doc file in Writer. The battery on her laptop popped off and she got the ASII message and all ### described in this thread. We were LOST. I have no idea how or why this worked, but the file was kept in a Dropbox cloud-synched folder. Nothing at all worked, however, we were able to retrieve the file in perfect condition by logging onto Dropbox via a browser on another laptop and simply downloading it. I am not super tech savvy, but our situation mirrored the one described as hopeless above and it worked out fine. I doubt that saving the corrupt file to Dropbox after the fact would work, but its possible. I just know in this situation it saved our family vacation so I thought I would share.

[Hagar Delest]

You have just retrieved the previous version of the file. When it crashed, it certainly did not have time to update the version that was in the cloud with the corrupted version. That was a lucky situation, just confirming the need of backups.

[John_Ha]

It was a .doc file in Writer.

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

[John_Ha]

You have just retrieved the previous version of the file. When it crashed, it certainly did not have time to update the version that was in the cloud with the corrupted version. That was a lucky situation, jut confirming the need of backups.

Hagar
Dropbox also saves previous versions so, even if the corrupted file had been synchronised, the previous version would still have been available.