My documents are saying "Word found unreadable content". Can these documents be recovered?!!!!!!!!!!

Question

My word documents are saved on Icloud Drive and have been for 2 years. I am not experiencing an issue with my word documents stating "Word found unreadable content" and I am unable to open the file. This is extremely upsetting as I very much NEED these documents!

How can these documents be recovered? I put my documents on Icloud Drive bc my external hard drive crashed and I had to pay $300 to recover all of the files. Icloud Drive was supposed to be dependable. I pay a subscription for Word and have been for my entire adult life. I really need these documents to be recovered.

I've already tried the following:

• Check the file permissions for the document or drive.
• Make sure there is sufficient free memory and disk space.
• Open the file with the Text Recovery converter.

Answer 1

Hi @Casha

It is recommended that you back up these documents first, and then try the following steps:

Are you using Mac? I suggest you use "Open and Repair" function on Windows for a check.

• Please open Word first, then click File > Open > Browse. Choose the damaged file, click the small triangle arrow icon > Choose Open and Repair.

If it does not work, you may change the document extension, such as .rtf or .html. Then open it and see if you can find the text content inside.

Besides, try to open them with other word processing programs, such as Word online, Pages. Here is a thread about using Pages you may have a look: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255627097

Hope the information could be helpful.

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