Hi guys,

I have a corrupted Word document file that I want to try to repair. The file is the first chapter of a client's book and I want see if I can get his file back into mostly what he used to have.

The file was corrupted when his laptop hard drive failed. He had it restored by a professional file restoration company but the file has been corrputed.

Any ideas on what a good program to use to repair the damaged file. It's openable but is just gibberish and unreadable.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Though your friend's situation may be a bit more complicated, 90% of Word related problems are as a result of a corrupted Normal.dot file.

Have your friend rename his Normal.dot file to Normal.old.
Then reboot and open a fresh instance of Word.
Having renamed the Normal.dot will force Word to create a fresh Normal.dot

If your friend had custom formating template features in the previous Normal.dot, specific to his project, he will have to re-customize the Normal.dot. I'd recommend that he then rename that file to Custom.dot.
When he is working on the project he can select Custom.dot for use.
When he is doing other Word activity, he can use the basic Normal.dot.

The Normal.dot files are found at --> C:\documents and settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\

Of course, this simple solution may not solve the problem.

If your friend has any Word Add-ons, for instance for Adobe or MS FAX, these also can become corrupt, and/or can be causing the problem all by themselves. Removing Add-ons can fix the problem.

Word can also run funky if it is being run in "compatibility mode".

If all else fails (but only after trying the "renaming" of Normal.dot) Word has its own repair tool called Detect and Repair, which can be found in Word Command Bar - Help - Detect and Repair.

The truly "all pro" Word help folks keep excellent and detailed assistance tips at:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/index.htm

Post back with progress or if your friend needs additional specific instructions.

Best Regards