Articles Office How to solve the error 'MS Word was Unable to Read this Document. It may be Corrupt'

Solved-- "MS Word was Unable to Read this Document. It may be Corrupt"

Updated: By Yvonne Keller

word unable to read

“I saved a Word file with Word 2010. When I tried to open it, I got a message--"Word was unable to read this document. It may be corrupt. Try one or more of the following: 'Open and repair file, open the file with the Text Recovery converter' ". What may be the best solution? Or is there any other ways?”

Microsoft Word is a commonly used text editing tool for learning and working. You may also encounter various problems in the daily use. For us, when we encounter errors in the document, we often don’t know what to do and become panic. When you get the above error, do you know why it happens? How to solve these errors in time? Read this article and you will find the answer.

Generally speaking, there are several common reasons that cause Word document damage:

  • 1. Virus damaged
  • 2. Word document conversion between different versions of office
  • 3. Office program error
  • 4. Close or open word file abnormally

So for the error message "Word was unable to read this document. It may be corrupt." you can try the following solutions:

solution
Solution 1: Repair by ‘Open and Repair’
Solution 2: Change or Rename Word Template
Solution 3: Check Service Pack
Solution 4: Repair with professional Word file repair software

Solution 1: Repair by 'Open and Repair'

Step 1: In Microsoft Word program, go to File menu, and then select Open.

Step 2: In the Open dialog box, find and select the damaged Word document.

Step 3: Click the arrow on the Open button, and then select Open and Repair from the drop-down menu.

open and repair

Solution 2: Change or Rename Word Template

Step 1: Close your Word document, then press Win + R to open the Run window and input the command "%appdata%\microsoft\templates", then click OK to run.

search word template

Step 2: Right-click Normal.dotm, and rename "Oldword.old”.

rename word template

After that, close the File Explorer and restart Word, and then try to reopen the damaged document.

Solution 3: Check Service Pack

If your Word document is in the correct Word format and the correct extension, check whether your Word file is installed with the correct version of Office and has the corresponding service pack. If not, check and install the correct service pack, and then try again Open the damaged Word document.

How to judge whether Office Word has a service pack installed? You can see the following steps to check:

Step 1: Start Word, go to File > Help > Additional Version and Copyright Information

about microsfte office 2010

Step 2: Enter Additional Version and Copyright Information to see if SP2 or SP1 is displayed, if not, the Service Pack is not installed.

check service pack

Solution 4: Repair with professional Word file repair software

Cocosenor Word Repair Tuner is a Word docx document repair tool with remarkable effects and simple operation. It can quickly recover the corrupt or damaged .docx Word file. Look at the below steps to repair your damaged Word document.

Step 1: Download and install Cocosenor Word Repair Tuner on your computer.

Note:

Please close the Microsoft office program before you repair the Word document.

Step 2: Start Cocosenor Word Repair Tuner, click the Open button in the main interface to select the Word file to be repaired.

click the open button

Step 3: Then select the corrupted file from your computer and open it into the software to repair.

select file

Step 4: After opening the file, it will immediately enter the automatically repair process. Just wait a few seconds at this time.

select file

Step 5: After repairing, a prompt box will pop up showing that the file has been restored, click OK.

file restored successfully

Step 6: Save the repaired file to your computer for use. Click Save and select a save path in the pop-up file explorer and then click Save.

save the repair file

Step 7:After saving successfully, you can click Yes in the prompt box to open the repaired file right now or click No to end the process.

yes or no

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