You don’t need to download a recovery tool to deal with deleted and corrupted files. Robert Irvine explains how you can find and fix them without installing anything
Recover Word documents that won’t open
There are few things more frustrating than being unable to open a file that contains important information, or finding that when you do open the document it contains a load of gobbledygook. Rather than tearing your hair out, try repairing the file using Word’s built-in recovery tools. Click the Office logo (or File if you’re using an older version of Office), then Open and locate the corrupt document. Click the arrow next to the Open button and choose ‘Open and Repair’ from the menu. If this doesn’t fix the problem, try clicking the arrow next to ‘All Word documents’ in the Open dialogue box, choose ‘Recover Text from Any File’ and select the unreadable document. Word will then convert and try to recover the text from the damaged file.
If that doesn’t work either, and you’re using Windows 7 or later, right-click the document, choose Properties and select the Previous Versions tab. This lists older copies of the file that have been backed up by System Restore. Select an entry and click Open, and it should open in Word without any problems, although you’ll lose any data you entered after that version was saved. Note that System Restore needs to be turned on for this to work.
If none of Word’s built-in tools proves effective, try uploading the corrupt file to OfficeRecovery’s online repair tool for Word documents (online.officerecovery.com/word). Just click ‘Choose file’ to select the troublesome item (it needs to be in DOC, DOCX, DOCM or RTF format), then click ‘Secure Upload and Repair’ to recover the data and save it to a new Word document. Now comes the catch: to download the repaired file straight away, you’ll need to pay £6.45. You can see a free ‘demo’ version to find out whether the fix has worked, although this is usually limited to a few, partially obscured pages. Alternatively, you can sign up with OfficeRecovery for a free repair, although you’ll have to wait two weeks to get your salvaged file. You can also recommend the service on your Facebook page, website or blog to get a discount code you can redeem against one free job.
OfficeRecovery is rather hit and miss with what it can fix, but it’s certainly worth a try. It also offers online repair tools for Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, Outlook mailboxes and many other file formats, with similar restrictions and workarounds.
Recover photos from a corrupt memory card
Picture the scene: you’ve just come back from holiday with a memory card full of photos, but when you connect your camera to your PC, it’s unable to read the card to download the images. Before you panic, try the following to find and fix the errors on the memory card: on the Start menu, type cmd and press Enter to open Command Prompt or, in Windows 8+, point to the lowerright corner of the screen, click Search and type Command Prompt. When the Command Prompt opens, type CHKDSK /F followed by the letter of the drive (in this case, the SD card), for example E:, and press Enter. Windows will then verify the files and folders stored on the card, and correct any problems it finds. With a bit of luck, you’ll be able to access your images.
Another way to retrieve pictures from a corrupt card, as well as a damaged hard drive or USB stick, is to use PhotoRec (bit.ly/photo372). This is a portable tool that doesn’t need to be installed, so it won’t overwrite your images, although you do need to download the program (which comes packaged with another tool called TestDisk) and extract the photorec_win file. When you run this, it will open a command-line window that lists all the devices connected to your PC. Select the one with the photos stored on it, press Enter and follow the instructions. You’ll find a step-by-step guide to using PhotoRec at bit.ly/photorec372.
If a specific photo has been corrupted, you could try the aforementioned OfficeRecovery, which offers an online tool for repairing images in JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG or RAW format. Again, you’ll either need to pay or wait to download the recovered image, or it will be obscured by a message like the one pictured, left.
Repair corrupt PDF files online
PDF files usually do an accurate job of presenting documents in a format that can be opened by anyone with a PDF reader, but occasionally something goes wrong such as fonts or tables not displaying correctly. There are several online tools that promise to repair corrupt PDFs, but most have a catch such as charging you to download the fixed file or superimposing a watermark on it. One of the best free options is PDFaid’s Repair PDF tool (bit.ly/pdfrepair372), which looks a bit cheap and nasty, but actually works well, although it limits you to files up to 20MB in size. We also like the online PDFrepair tool from the improbably named Weeny Software (bit.ly/weeny372).
Repair corrupt system files
There are lots of programs that promise to fix problems with system files on your PC, but you can often solve them using a built-in Windows tool called System File Checker (SFC). This scans your hard drive for corrupted and missing files that may cause Windows to misbehave, and attempts to repair and replace them. To run SFC, launch the Command Prompt as an administrator, type sfc /scannow and press Enter. SFC will then scan all protected system files, and replace corrupted items with a cached copy. Don’t close the Command Prompt window until the scan is complete (it may take some time).
Recover files deleted from cloud storage
Most files you save to Dropbox, Google Drive and other online storage accounts are backups of items you already have elsewhere, so it doesn’t matter too much if you lose them. But if they’re the only copies you have, then accidental deletion is more of a worry. Fortunately, it’s usually easy to recover files that vanish from the cloud.
For Dropbox files, sign into the web interface and click the Events option in the left-hand menu. This provides a timeline of every change to your account, including file deletions. Find and click the entry for the files you deleted, and click ‘Restore these files’ to recover them.
In Google Drive, first check your Trash folder to see if the lost items are there. If not, you can submit a recovery request to Google via its support page ‘Get help with locating or recovering a deleted file’ (bit.ly/deleted372). This asks for information about the lost file, such as its name and when you last accessed it, and reassuringly promises: “Don’t worry – our Drive specialists will look into this as soon as possible and you’ll have your file in no time”.
On the OneDrive website, click the ‘Recycle bin’ option at the bottom of the left-hand menu to view your deleted files, which are stored for one year before being removed, then select the ones you want and choose ‘Restore items’. Unlike Google, Microsoft doesn’t offer much help if your lost files aren’t in the bin, other than advising you to check other folders carefully and “ask the owner to share them again”.