Odt file filled with strange characters, zip repair doesn't work

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#1

Today I opened my 35KB odt file but it is corrupted :frowning: I last worked in it about a month ago with Libreoffice 6
It’s now filled with weird characters depending on the LibreOffice version. With the latest version I just updated, I get 7 pages of mostly Chinese looking characters. With older versions (such as 6 or 5.2.6.2) I get about 150 pages with a couple lines of strange characters on each.
The problem occurs only in this document.
woonst.odt (34.4 KB)

I tried repairing with WinRAR and 7-zip, as well as many tools online. Errors I get are “archive unknown format”, “is not archive”, found 0 files, etc.

Can someone recover any text from my file? Really sad that a file can get corrupted so badly (unrepairable) and you don’t have a backup of the plain text or previous save…

#2

Really sad that a file can get corrupted so badly (unrepairable) and you don’t have a backup of the plain text or previous save…

Who is you?

#3

It is completely destroyed on disk. Check if your storage is failing. And you have it lost completely, unless you manage to find a backup (I do not believe that you could get some ‘undelete’-like utility to recover something as old as 30+ days ago, if you use your system often), especially on a failing media.

#4

Yet it still says 35 kB filesize?

#5

Your OS is Windows?

#6

Yes it still says 35 kB filesize, what is strange here? It only would change if the file metadata was broken on your filesystem, which is typically located in a different place on the media than the file data itself.

#7

Yes I’m running Windows best version (a.k.a win 7).

#8

But I also uploaded the file and it still says (34.4 KB).
“Completely destroyed” – do you mean an ungodly number of bits are flipped? Because the file is certainly not empty (can also see it when opened in notepad).

#9

What is your expectation?
There is a record on your file allocation table (or its analog in your used filesystem), telling “there is a file woonst.odt starting from position X through position Y on the media”; position X through position Y taking 35 kB. There are the bytes on that area, that got changed completely (and likely, some surrounding bytes got changed, too) because of … well, unknown; I guessed some HW problem, but could be anything. And that means that you still can read the bytes, and send them anywhere - all those now-useless bytes from X to Y.

#10

You can search in the temporary directory (although there is little hope).
Open the attached file and click the “Find Deleted Files” button. If there is a file with a suitable size in the list of files, then rename its extension from .tmp to .odt and try to open it in LO.
FindDeletedFiles.ods (12.5 KB)

2 Likes
After recovery all comments are lost in a document
A calc file, .ods does not open, LO just hangs, tried several methods of recovery
#11

Makes sense!
The file was stored on an external drive. Didn’t know such a bad corruption was likely to take place. I certainly learned my lesson; from now on I’ll be scattering backups like Easter eggs!

1 Like
#12

Really sad that a file can get corrupted so badly (unrepairable) and you don’t have a backup of the plain text or previous save…

I wrote that thinking the whole file is corrupted due to zip format (one bit ruins everything) but I’m probably wrong and zips can recover from mild damage just like CDs?

#13

ZIPs can be recovered from 1-byte damage somewhat: it is not guaranteed that it would restore everything, but no 1-byte damage would make ZIP totally alien to any restore utility.

Yours is not such case; in all ODF files, there would be at least the usual ZIP header (starting with PK bytes), then after the header, there goes a mimetype file stored without compression (so you may read it using notepad; e.g., it may read mimetypeapplication/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)…

#14

In that case, are you lucky enough to have a working copy in Volume Shadow Copy?

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