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[Data Recovery] Recover Data From Corrupt .xlsx and .docx Files

Word 2007 .docx and Excel 2007 .xlsx files are actually zipped collections of XML files. Interestingly, XML as a format is unforgiving of data corruption.

With Word 2007 .docx files, The main text is found in document.xml file in the collection. Similarly, with Excel 2007 .xlsx files, The main raw data is contained in the sharedStrings and numbered worksheet XML files.

With Excel 2007, if the sharedStrings and or worksheet XML files get corrupt, then, Excel has difficulty in recovering the unformatted data ad that is when we say that the .xlsx file is corrupt. Interestingly, a Freeware utility Corrupt xlsx2csv uses a command line unzipping program that will unzip partially corrupt worksheet[#].xml and sharedStrings.xml files.  Also the Perl data extraction routines don’t use XML techniques that care about well formed XML, a stumbling block for other Excel 2007 recovery programs. 

Image: Recovering data from corrupt .xlsx Excel 2007 files

Image: Recovering data from corrupt .xlsx Excel 2007 files

Similarly, with .docx file formats, The main text is found in document.xml file in the collection. For extracting text data from corrupt .docx files, a freeware utility called Damaged docx2txt. Damaged docx2txt uses CakeCMD , an unzipper that is able to unzip partially corrupt document.xml files.  Also the Perl routine used to extract the text from the document.xml file doesn’t care about well-formedness of the XML, a possible stumbling block of Word 2007.

Image: Recovering text from damaged or corrupt docx files.

Image: Recovering text from damaged or corrupt docx files.

Pre-requisites: Microsoft .NET Version 2 Framework must be installed on the system for these utilities to work.

The above 2 utilities can certainly help you recover data from the corrupt excel and word 2007 files. Do share your experience in the comments.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 9:06 am and is filed under Free, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “[Data Recovery] Recover Data From Corrupt .xlsx and .docx Files”

  1. If you are running a business, you must make it a point to have a backup copy of all your files for worst situations. You are responsible for everything when you fail to do this thing.

  2. I tried this on a very important and large document that was corrupted. It said it found that the xml portion of the document was missing and there was no text to be retrieved. Any other suggestions. Some of the pay software shows me that it sees text in the document but I have to pay $50 + to buy their software.

    Doug

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