I have a damaged Word Document. Please help??

[HoodGordon]

I have a damaged Word Document that was saved to a USB. It went from a size of 177kb to 4kb. The error: "Unexpected end of input. Location: Part: word/document.xml, Line: 2, column: 12679" Is there anything that can be done? Help??????

[Guessed]

The file size shrinkage is a big red flag but the error message gives you some hope that content can be recovered.

A simple way to attempt recovery is to use OpenOffice to open and convert the file. This is far more fault tolerant than Word appears to be with its own files.

If that doesn't work, can you change the file extension to .zip and see if the file can be examined by a zip file editor? If so, a manual recovery process can give good results. There are a few genuine 'knights in shining armour' who have the skills to resurrect files from the ashes but you would need to post your doc here to give them a chance to perform the necessary manual steps.

[Charles Kenyon]

I'm afraid I can hold out little hope.
Be very careful using flashdrives.

• Do not manipulate any document on them from within Word.
• Do not save a document to a flashdrive from within Word.
• Do not print a document on a flashdrive from within Word or using Word.
• Do not open a document on a flashdrive from within Word or using Word.

Doing any of these — from within Word — can (will) cause document corruption.

Instead, use the flashdrive to transport documents but do any work on them with a copy on your hard disk drive.