I have been working on an intense selection criteria for a job application that closes in 12 hours.

I tried to open the file this morning and it has saved with ~$ characters in the title and the icon looks like a shadow.

I keep getting "The Office Open XML file ~$rwin Selection Criteria.docx cannont be opened because there are problems with the contents."

Followed by "Word found unreadable content in ~$ Selection Criteria.docx" Do you want to recover the contents of this document? If you trust the source of this document, Click Yes.

And then "The Office Open XML file ~$rwin Selection Criteria.docx cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents


Details Microsoft Office cannot open the file because parts or missing or invalid.

I have tried system restore a a few freeware document recovery programs with no luck. I am desperate to get this document back because the clock is ticking and i just cant replicater it's contents.

Any 11th hour advice you can offer would be invaluable, i'm afraid though that it might just be lost completly

Files that begin with ~$ are lock files. They are not document files and they contain nothing that is recoverable. If Word crashes, these lock files can be left behind. In some circumstances they can prevent the matching documents they lock from being saved. See http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm

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Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
Visit my web site for more programming tips and ready made processes www.gmayor.com