When I open my thesis in Word it says "Word found unreadable content in file.docx. Do you want to recover the contents of this document?". I click Yes and it fails. I have no other copy. Please help.
Word says it found unreadable content in my DOCX file. How do I repair it?
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Jordan Harper October 29, 2026
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Copy the file first, so you keep the original untouched. Then try these in order.
1. Open and Repair: in Word choose File > Open > Browse, select the file, click the arrow next to the Open button and choose Open and Repair.
2. Open it with the Recover Text from Any File converter. In the same Open dialog set the file type to Recover Text from Any File (*.*). You get the text without the formatting.
3. Change the extension to .zip and open it. A DOCX is a zip file. In the word folder you will find document.xml with all the text, which you can open in a browser or text editor, and copy your text out.
4. Check previous versions, OneDrive version history, or the AutoRecover files.
When you have the text back, paste it into a new document and save in two places.
Recover Text from Any File gave me all the text. I will rebuild the formatting. Thank you!