Corrupt File! Help!!!

users
#1

My husband has been working on a spreadsheet for over a month when last night
our laptop was unplugged. The battery is busted and the only way to keep the
laptop on is to have it plugged in. When he booted the laptop back up he was
prompted to recover the file and the recovery failed.He is them prompted to
choose an ACSII Filter option. When he chooses the option he gets a window
that says "Document file 'name%20name.ods' is locked for editing by Unknown
User Open document read-only or open a copy of document for editing."

Each option opens a word document with this for 3 pages:

ice.Office.UI.WindowState:WindowStateType['private:resource/toolbar/drawbar']"><prop
oor:name="SoftClose" oor:op="fuse"><value>false</value></prop></item><item
oor:path="/org.openoffice.Office.UI.ChartWindowState/UIElements/States/org.openoffice.Office.UI.WindowState:WindowStateType['private:resource/toolbar/drawbar']"><prop
oor:name="Style" oor:op="fuse"><value>0</value></prop></item><item

The file had been saved many times before, is there a way I can either save
this file or open a past save? This is an ancient laptop (MacOS 10.4.11) so
alot of downloads wont work for it. If I can email the file to an up to date
laptop then I could save it. Can anyone help me? My husband is really upset
about losing this file and is already battling depression and this does not
need to be another thing on his list to be upset about.

Thanks for everyone help!

#2

Hi :slight_smile:

1st thing is to copy the file that appears to be corrupted.
2nd is to find the "User Profile" and inside it the "back-up" folder
and copy the relevant file that is hopefully in there too.

Preferably put those copies on Usb-stick or email them to yourselves
so that you have a copy that hasn't been worked on yet. So any advice
from anyone can be safely tried without further harming the one
version of the files.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#3

Hi :slight_smile:
Ok, so you have made a copy of the corrupted file. The "User Profile" is here
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile
well, that's the guide that describes where it is on the various
different systems.

I tend to try a few different approaches all at about the same time
when faced with this sort of thing. We have all been there and lost
data at some point or other. It's easy to be wiser with hindsight,
such as saving back-ups on different machines but before hindsight we
mnight not have thought about it!!

It might be worth trying to remember if the file is saved anywhere
else. Has the file been worked on anywhere else? Are there any other
machines that might have a fairly recent version, perhaps the newer
laptop got used sometime? Did the file get emailed, or saved onto
usb-stick? Cd/Dvd back-ups? Do you have a network, might it be on
there? Is there an older version of the same file in the same folder
or archived somewhere?

If your husband can manage to start again he will find that it is FAR
quicker to re-do. He might even find that the entire month's work can
be done fairly easily in just a couple of days. In the process of
writing it originally he might have done research or thought carefully
about different options and tried different things out, perhaps
read-up on how to do certain things and then maybe not even gone that
way in the end. All of that is swept aside on the 2nd time making it
much easier and faster to re-do something.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#4

If you can't find a backup. Try this.

You seem to indicate that the corrupted spreadsheet is called "*name name.ods*".

If that is what it is called copy the corrupted file to an empty folder/directory.

In that folder/directory there should now only contain the file "*name name.ods*" unzip this file.

The contents of the folder should now contain these files and directories.
     * Configurations2/ *content.xml* manifest.rdf META-INF/ meta.xml mimetype name\ name.ods settings.xml styles.xml Thumbnails/
Open the file *content.xml* with firefox or equivalent and inspect the file. Hopefully you should recognise your data albeit in xml format.

If you recognise the data, paste the first 10 or so lines and the last 10 or so lines into an emial and mail it here. Anonymise any data as appropriate.

Then we cen see what we can do next.

Alex

#5

Hi :slight_smile:
After you have created copies of the files can you rename the file
ending of one from .ods to .zip and then double-click on that? It
should open as though it is a compressed file so an "archive manager"
should open it.

If it works it wont look anything like the file! You should see
various ".xml" documents and about 3 folders. One of the xml files
should be called something like "contents.xml". I think this is the
file that should contain most of the data. However when you open it
then it should look a LOT like the file you described so maybe there
is something weird going on.

Any chance of reinstalling LibreOffice? If LibreOffice itself got
knocked out then that might explain the weird result. Of course if it
was that then the newer laptop should just open the file with no
problem (hence why i tend to try several different approaches all at
the same time)

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#6

13 Oca 2014 19:17 tarihinde "melodyfire" <cowens33743@gmail.com> yazdı:
Hi,
File corruption may occur in all platforms due to similar reasons.

Dont be upset. Thanks to odf format the file can be examined. Probably some
xml errors in styles.xml.

If you have Ubuntu, install Emacs. It comes with great xml tools to mark
the errors.

I can help you too but i will be available only after Wednesday. Other
friends will help soon i hope.

Best regards,
Zeki

#7

Hi :slight_smile:
Emacs sounds great! It's not just in Ubuntu, it should be easy to get
in any Gnu&Linux such as SuSE, Mageia/Mandriva, Redhat/CentOS, Fedora,
Debian/Mint, Android/Blackberry/Chrome.

The question is how easy is it to get for the Mac with a failing
hard-drive or a laptop (that probably runs Windows)

Anyway if it's possible to find the other thread about file-corruption
might it work for them too?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: