Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

LovingLife139 wrote:If it helps anyone else in the future, learn from my mistakes

Your biggest mistake was not taking backups to a separate disk and, preferably, to the web.

Install Google Backup and SYnc or Dropbox and invest a few pounds in a USB stick. Take daily backups of important files. As a last resort, email yourself a file - if you configure your email to keep files on the server it will act as a backup. Switch on AOO's Always create backup copy and AutoRecovery - see Tutorial.

I had a user on a Win 10 machine using Apache Open Office 4.1.2 who had a doc open, accidentally did a select all, type a few characters then freaked out tried to close it down but instinctively hit 'save' on the way out. So years of work gone in a flash.

No Auto Backup, no file in temp, but I did find a shadow copy and was able to retrieve it, however it is corrupted. I have tried every trick I know, multiple versions of open or libre, zipped files open, but the content.xml won't.

I did get 7 pages of text on one attempt, but there should be many, many more.

One error on opening: Read Eror, Format Error discovered in the Filein sub-document content.xml at 1,0(row,col).

Want to have a look? http://apctec.com/SimpleC.zip

Thanks for reading, fingers crossed.

The content.xml file seems badly corrupted from fairly early in the file. I managed to recover a small amount of the raw text of the content which I have attached. Maybe someone else may recover somewhat more than I managed.

Thank you for taking a look.

Yeah, that is the same I was able to get, about 9 pages, there were around 300 pages total.

What is weird, is I was able to get 2 copies from shadow folders, one from May, one from June, and they both only have the first 9 pages recoverable.

I guess I am running out of options? Is there anyway the xml file can be repaired even if it costs $$?

Run PhotoRec or Recuva and see what it finds. You will need to rename any files it finds to .odt before opening them

Hi guys. I stumbled upon this thread because my fiancee has one chapter of her postgrad thesis corrupted, with the usual error: 'format error discovered in the sub-document context.xml at 2,203644(row,col)). As she was pretty desperate (there weren't any previous versions available), I tried to recover the file using the xml editing instructions posted by some amazing guys above, but to no avail (probably because I'm totally inexperienced with xml tagging).

I know it's too much to ask, but if one of you is willing to give it a shot, it would save her so much time. Thanks in advance!

the file was too big for upload here, attaching gdrive link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=10MIND ... jawBMhdpqr

I've managed to recover 42 pages of this document; if you care to PM me an email address I'll send you the repaired document.

As a good potential spouse, you should now introduce your fiancee to the idea of multiple backups of important documents - you might find Timestamped backup a useful tool for creating such; I use it and wouldn't be without it.

You are a true hero! The file was completely recovered, including formating!!!
We can't thank you enough for saving her days of re-writing! (She's literally crying out of happiness).

I usually do cloud backups but she prefers to keep copies of her work on USB flash drives, but she got really forgetful and had a single instance saved only. I am sure that was the best lesson for saving timestamped backups. Thx for the extension, I 'll have her download it ASAP!

I'd be cautious about saving direct to USB memory sticks; there are reports here of people having corrupted files as a result. If you need to store data on a USB stick, save it to the normal hard drive, then copy to USB, making sure you observe the correct removal procedures.

A good day, another happy customer

I have a corrupted ODT file that means many months of hard work

please help us recover it

this is the link https://drive.google.com/file/d/10EmGTL ... sp=sharing

anything you can get, saves us from a lot of chaos on future weeks, thank you

Unfortunately that file is damaged such that I cannot open it and access the contents; perhaps others will try. If you have backups, now is the time to use them.

If not, I suggest you try and recover any temporary files that Writer may have created - see [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files. Do this as soon as possible.

If you aren't using some backup procedure, you might consider Timestamped backup

sukivalencia wrote:I have a corrupted ODT file that means many months of hard work

robleyd wrote:perhaps others will try

I am sorry but the file is not an AOO file - it is random garbage and there is no user data anywhere in it.

Thank you for trying =)

I have the recovered files, but seem to be the same story, here they are

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZGmfE ... irfIVDxIIS

=)

Unfortunately you are right - there is nothing recoverable in those files.

Hi everyone! I've got an odt file which has been deleted by error and then recovered using DMDE, but unfortunately seems that files on the inside are gone (especially content.xml), because when i zipped with winrar it tells me that archive is damaged or in a unknown format.

By the way, if somebody wanna try to take a look would be great, thanks in advance!

Unfortunately there is nothing recoverable in the file you posted; it is not even a valid .odt file

Hello,

something have happened to my huge .odt file which contains close to 240 pages. It took me 2 years to work on it and I am really not sure what to do.
A week ago, I shutdown my windows based computer and the next day all text was changed to "###############"
The article is written in French and Russian.

I have tried the methods described here, but I am not able to get context.xml file.

Could any one please help me?

Let me add google drive link as well, as .zip version has a tiny size.
Google drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0AW7J ... sp=sharing

Forget that copy of the file, there will be nothing in it; the size alone indicates that.


Do what this tutorial suggests
[Tutorial] How to find and un-delete AOO temporary files

If that doesn't help 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 a first priority; other use of the computer may overwrite any existing but deleted files and prevent their recovery. There is no guarantee that you will recover anything useful.

Do the above soonest!

RoryOF wrote:Forget that copy of the file, there will be nothing in it; the size alone indicates that.


Do what this tutorial suggests
[Tutorial] How to find and un-delete AOO temporary files

If that doesn't help 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 a first priority; other use of the computer may overwrite any existing but deleted files and prevent their recovery. There is no guarantee that you will recover anything useful.

Do the above soonest!

Running recuva in deep scan mode. Last two attempts it froze, so I am doing it again.
How do I identify the file I need as .tmp copies might have a random name?

Look at their timestamps. Before opening them you will need to rename them to the file type you were using.

After 3 scans with Recuva I was not able to find good copy.

I mean I did see deleted copies of my article, but they were all bad. I tried to restore old .odt,tmp and bak files. Out of 12-15 which I have tried only 2 were in OK condition but were one of the early copies (30 pages out of 120) .

I also uninstalled all windows updates which were auto installed at the date of the event.

Next thing I did, I used ShadowExplorer, and on the first attempt was able to retrieve semi decent copy of my article. Decent in a sense that at least I am able to get context.xml
I am going to continue tomorrow, got too tired after working on this for 13 hours.
Meanwhile, could anyone please try to fix content.xml?
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KCkbg ... p1R6TcgzkF

My first attempt tells me that content.xml is badly damaged and my tools refuse to open it. This makes sense in a damaged file, as I suspect content.xml is the last file written and often in a damaged file space is reserved for it, but the computer has closed down before the content was written to the reserved space.

If you have a printout, consider scanning and OCRing the printout to restore your text to that time.

RoryOF wrote:My first attempt tells me that content.xml is badly damaged and my tools refuse to open it. This makes sense in a damaged file, as I suspect content.xml is the last file written and often in a damaged file space is reserved for it, but the computer has closed down before the content was written to the reserved space.

Thank you RoryOF very much for your time taken to check the files.

Help!!! I just had the problem mentioned in the post but I don't have the knowledge to achieve the steps!

Can anybody help me please? I need to submit that paperwork in less than 8 hours

Thanks in advance for the help!!

Upload the file. [Forum] How to attach a document here Note maximum file size is 128K. If your file is larger, use a file sharing site such as Mediafire and post the link here.

Hi all,

I have a corrupt ODS file. The file header seems to be corrupt (when opening in a HEX editor, the file does not start with 50 4b 03 04 14 00 00 08). As a consequence I also cannot open the file with a file archive manager (like 7-zip).
The file however seems to contain data (it's not a file with only '00' entries).

Is there a way to recover the file?
gclub คาสิโนออนไลน์
Many thanks for your help!

Try any repair option that your archive manager may offer. As a fallback position if repair fails and you don't have a backup strategy - [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files

If you need a backup tool, consider the Time stamped backup extension.

I had one corrupt file that could not open. Used an online file converter that surprisingly could convert to another format. Converted back to .ODT and voila it worked fine afterwards.

Hi, I have the error discovered in sub-document message on my file, and I'm on MacOS and totally computer illiterate.

I used a file converter to change the file, and managed to get all of my original text back.

However, the file had 'record changes' on, and also a ton of those 'comment' post-its along the side from two editors, and I can't seem to recover these. I'm supposed to have them in the final manuscript.

Does anyone have any experience with recovering a doc with these bells and whistles on it?

It would help me so much.

Blunny