Reading erroe with Writer

users
#1

Hey!

I closed a file and when I tried to open it again, about 10min later, I
received the following message: "Reading Error. Cannot read file". I have no
idea what may have happened: during such 10min I did nothing but surf
Facebook and the likes. Could anyone who is more computer-savvy /please/
help me? This is my master thesis, which I was editing to publish as a book.
I have a lot backup copies of the thesis, but I would lose almost two days
of work if I could not fix this file...

This happened in two different computers, a Mac and a PC, so I'm pretty sure
the problem is in the file. Just for you to know, I was working on the Mac
when this happened. It is running OS X Mavericks.

Here is the link to the file
<https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4567810/Dissertação%20-%20Versão%20Revisada.odt>

#2

Thanks for the help! It is possible to open the .odt file with WinZip in
Windows (and probably with Mac as well, although I'm not on my Mac right
now to try), but I can't build it back into an .odt file after "unzipping"
it - the text turns into some weird symbols...

#3

Hi Bruno

bhvilar wrote

I closed a file and when I tried to open it again, about 10min later, I
received the following message: "Reading Error. Cannot read file". I have
no idea what may have happened: during such 10min I did nothing but surf
Facebook and the likes. Could anyone who is more computer-savvy

/

please

/

help me? This is my master thesis, which I was editing to publish as a
book. I have a lot backup copies of the thesis, but I would lose almost
two days of work if I could not fix this file...

This happened in two different computers, a Mac and a PC, so I'm pretty
sure the problem is in the file. Just for you to know, I was working on
the Mac when this happened. It is running OS X Mavericks.

I'm sorry to say that the file is indeed corrupted beyond any useful repair
(other than recovering the text, which Tom already did :wink:
http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/file/n4080337/Dissertação-VersãoRevisada-v2.odt).

There might be an Autorecovery copy which you can go back to...

I never used LO in a Mac but I assume the same principles apply: you need to
go to Tools - Options - LibreOffice - Paths and check where your Backup
folder is. Then navigate to that folder using the Mac file manager and if
you are lucky there should be a Dissertação_etcetera.bak from a recent date.
Just copy the file to another folder, rename the copy from bak to odt and
open it using LO.

Boa sorte!

Pedro

#4

Thanks for the help, the problem was solved (as well as possible, at least)!

#5

Hi :slight_smile:
Ahh, i forgot the last bit which is to rename the file-ending back from
".zip" to ".odt". That should fix it [crosses fingers behind back]
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
I did a quick bit of work and recovered this version of just the text.
Dissertação-VersãoRevisada-v2.odt
<http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/file/n4080337/Dissertação-VersãoRevisada-v2.odt>
it lacks images and charts but hopefully you can re-acquire them?

The original file was 11.2Mb which is fairly large for emailing and this
list doesn't accept attachments anyway. So it was good to see drop-box
being used. I have used Nabble to keep the file with the thread (and
because i don't know how to use drop-box). The copy is just 220kB (ish)
(about 1/10th the size).

I had tried the link and got the same response. My 2nd attempt was to
download the file and double-click on it. Same response again. If this had
been my own file i would go back to my most recent back-up. Perhaps there
is a version emailed to someone, perhaps one on a usb-stick, perhaps one on
yet another machine? I'd have a quick hunt around but not put too much
effort into it at this stage.

"Back-up" is often made into very complicated processes but really it's just
"another copy" of the file. So it's fairly easy to make sure you do
informal back-ups by just using copy&paste. You probably already have one
such back-up laying around somewhere.

How i fixed the "version2" was using Gnu&Linux. I can right-click on Odt
files to "Open With" and then choose "Archive Manager". I also created a
blank document and opened it the same way. Then i dragged the
"contents.xml" from the broken file into the new one.

On another OS, such as Windows or Mac, i might have had to make a copy of
the broken file and then changed the file-ending from ".odt" to ".zip" and
then double-clicked. Similarly with the new file.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: