A "Repaired Document" is Completely Blank; I Lost 950 Pages of Writing

[AFXVPX]

Hi there,

I recently lost access to a .odt document’s text. As some preliminary notes, this document was about 950 pages long (each containing text) and at least 500 KB in size. In this topic, I’ll call my file name “MyDoc” (for confidentiality purposes).

When I tried to open MyDoc, this message appeared:

“The file ‘MyDoc.odt’ is corrupt and therefore cannot be opened. LibreOffice can try to repair the file.
The corruption could be the result of document manipulation or of structural document damage due to data transmission.
We recommend that you do not trust the content of the repaired document.
Execution of macros is disabled for this document.
Should LibreOffice repair the file?”

Beneath that message, I was given the options, “Yes” and “No.”
I clicked “Yes.”

LibreOffice then brought up a Writer document named “Untitled 1 (repaired document)”. This document says that it contains 323,136 words and 1,956,338 characters (with these counts displayed at the screen’s bottom). To my memory, these counts sound correct: similar to those of the original document.

However, the “repaired document” is blank, containing no words or characters. Secondly, the screen’s bottom says, “Page 1 of 1”: a much smaller page count than the large, original document. Thirdly, the .odt file called “MyDoc.odt” now has a size of only 16 KB.

As a side note, my other .odt documents still contain their text, but they sometimes produce .lock files that I have to delete in order to save those .odt files. However, this has been happening long before MyDoc.odt got corrupted.

I’d be overjoyed if someone could help me recover the text of MyDoc.odt!
Thank you greatly if you can help me!

[Wanderer]

@AFXVPX

but they sometimes produce .lock files that I have to delete in order to save those .odt files.

Lock-files are usually created, when you open a file and closed when you close it again. If you often find lock-files left on your system, this can be a signal your computer is switched of before all closing processes are terminated. This can be a reason for your loss of access, because it can be a signal of not completed save.

[JohnSUN]

Sorry, I understand that my comment does not apply to your problem with the missing document and can be regarded as offtopic. However, I am afraid that other users will look through the texts on this resource, find your remark and think “This is a great idea!”. I mean this sentence:

@AFXVPX

they sometimes produce .lock files that I have to delete in order to save those .odt files

I always use the rule Don’t delete any files unless you are sure what you are doing and recommend it to everyone.

If you are annoyed by the appearance of “~lock” files, you can use this tip or this one. (Oh, I see that @Wanderer also noticed this phrase.)

Sincerely condolences to your loss - a third of a million words is a very big job. I hope that the Time Machine or some other of the above tips will help you restore this document.

[CnPx]

Use system restore. On Mac its known as time machine.
On Windows if you haven’t created a restore point then sometimes applications do this automatically when you install them. (Time Machine will not create any back up automatically unless instructed to do so)

There is also a YouTube video that mite be able to help you. Hope you can get the file working again. If you do be sure to save a back up onto a external HDD or USB drive. Maybe a cloud solution but if the file is confidential I can understand why the cloud wouldn’t be a good suggestion.

[Wanderer]

First things first: As already given as an answer: Check for older Versions and backups. Copy these again, before you start to work with the files, so you don’t loose your recovery.

Then copy your corrupt file, in your file-manager and rename the copy from .odt to .zip.
Open the zip-file.
Try to extract contents.xml and open this with an editor. The file may look cryptic, but you should get an impression, if your text is inside the file. Then ask for further help.

Famous last words: If you didn’t had a backup, you should consider changing this…