Word crashed and now I cannot open the file anymore
Thread poster: Manuela Junghans
Manuela Junghans
Manuela Junghans  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 14:50
Member (2004)
English to German
+ ...
Jul 6, 2017

Hi there

I´d just finished a two day translation this evening, when the word doc closed all of a sudden, and now I cannot open it anymore.

The error message I get is (literally translated from German): The name contained in the endtag of the element has to be the same as the element type in the starttag (Der im Endtag des Elements enthaltene Name muss mit dem Elementtyp im Starttag übereinstimmen)

I have neither changed the file name when saving the file
... See more
Hi there

I´d just finished a two day translation this evening, when the word doc closed all of a sudden, and now I cannot open it anymore.

The error message I get is (literally translated from German): The name contained in the endtag of the element has to be the same as the element type in the starttag (Der im Endtag des Elements enthaltene Name muss mit dem Elementtyp im Starttag übereinstimmen)

I have neither changed the file name when saving the file just before it crashed, nor have I changed anything else.

I should probably mention that the same thing happened yesterday, about half-way through the translation, but after restarting my computer I could then re-open the file. This trick didn´t work today. Maybe I should also mention that this is a OCR-ed word doc from a pdf and that´s it very heavy on graphics and formatting.

I´d be very very grateful for tips on how to hopefully recover the contents of this document, since the prospect of spending another two days re-translating it all is not too appealing...

Many thanks for your help in advance.

Manuela
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Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:50
Danish to English
+ ...
Repair Jul 6, 2017

I would google "repair corrupt word file" or "recover corrupt word file" and go through articles such as

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I would google "repair corrupt word file" or "recover corrupt word file" and go through articles such as

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/893672/how-to-open-documents-by-using-the-open-and-repair-feature-in-word

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-plus-ways-to-recover-a-corrupted-word-document/

If you restore the latest version from online backup, can you open that? Provided you run automatic online backups (I wouldn't dare to do without them).

Can you open it in other applications such Open Office, LibreOffice or a CAT tool?

Can you open it on another computer?

Have you checked that your RAM is not exhausted? It's unlikely to be the cause, but easy to check.
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Tony M
Tony M
France
Local time: 14:50
Member
French to English
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Open and Repair Jul 6, 2017

If you haven't already tried it, if you use File > Open to select your file (assuming you can see it?), the 'Open' button then has a dropdwon that includes the option 'open and repair', which I've found has sometimes worked for me in the past.

I'm assuming you can SEE your file alright in Explorer etc.? And the file extension hasn't been corrupted, for example? You might find you are able to open it in another application like OpenOffice for example...

Not to worry you,
... See more
If you haven't already tried it, if you use File > Open to select your file (assuming you can see it?), the 'Open' button then has a dropdwon that includes the option 'open and repair', which I've found has sometimes worked for me in the past.

I'm assuming you can SEE your file alright in Explorer etc.? And the file extension hasn't been corrupted, for example? You might find you are able to open it in another application like OpenOffice for example...

Not to worry you, but I had one very small, simply Word doc once that for some unknown reason got corrupted, and i was never able to open it again; even when I converted it to .TXT format and back again into Word, it crashed Word every time; no rhyme nor reason to it that I have ever been able to find!

By the way, if this has happened to you more than once, it sounds as if your system may be unstable in some way — unless it was just your overloaded document that phased it! You might need to put in place emergency recovery procedures to help avoid lost work. Things like autobackups, saving recovery information, and even manual backups with filename changes. I'd rather have that minor inconvenience than lose 2 days' work
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Manuela Junghans
Manuela Junghans  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 14:50
Member (2004)
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks so much... Jul 6, 2017

...Thomas and Tony

for your swift and extensive suggestions.

It does not open in a CAT Tool, there´s no "open and repair" option in the dropdown menu, yes, I did save it just before it crashed, but cannot find any way now to repair or recover it..

Will try the help forums, i.e. search for repairing corrupt files etc.

Many thanks for now for your help.


 
Tony M
Tony M
France
Local time: 14:50
Member
French to English
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Odd... but if necessary, send me your file Jul 6, 2017

Manuela Junghans wrote:
...there´s no "open and repair" option in the dropdown menu...


That's funny, what version of Word are you using? Perhaps this very useful feature has been dropped from more recent versions

If in doubt, e-mail me your file and I'll see if I can help.


 
Mark dc (X)
Mark dc (X)
India
Word Document Nov 8, 2019

Hi,
You can try using the free version of any Word Recovery Tool that are present online. If you have less data then you can go for this easy method.


 


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Word crashed and now I cannot open the file anymore






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