Anyone know how to recover an edit session from a workbook (.wbk) file

[skylark53]

Had been editing a doc with Word 2003 for about 3 hours when we had a power cut & computer went down.

I went through the recovery procedure recommended at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827099, but none of these steps succeeded. However, in the recycling bin I found a file with the right time, called ~WRA4072.wbk - evidently a ‘workbook’ file. This file cannot be opened using the procedure in Method 2: Search for Word backup files – the error is “Word experienced an error trying to open this file”. I was also unable to open it using the “Recover text from any file” option.

I eventually managed to open the .wbk file using Wordpad. Along with a lot of unprintable characters it does contain some text - but it is the original text from the beginning of the edit. The changes you've made must somehow be stored in the 'gobbledegook'.

So my question is, is there any way of recovering the edited text from this .wbk file? I really, really don’t want to have to input all this work again. Thanks! Sky

[jaclaz]

The UNformatted text, yes.

The formatted one, maybe, and with "special" programs.

A simple text extractor, like bintext:

http://www.s2services.com/text-extractors.htm

should do.

This is worth a try as well (though .Net ):

http://www.s2services.com/misc.-corrupt-word.htm

jaclaz

[skylark53]

Thanks, Jaclaz, I appreciate your suggestions.

However, this is not a .doc file, it's .wbk. This is the problem. There are lots of text extractors (including Word's own "recover text from any file", which failed) which do often work on .doc etc, but not with .wbk.

I tried the text extractor you recommended but it immediately says .wbk is not a recognised file type.

Sky

Edited May 22, 2010 by skylark53

[jaclaz]

I guess you've got it wrong.

"Real" text extractors don't care about the format of the file.

If you can see the text in a hex editor or Wordpad (i.e. the text is not compressed/encoded), you can recover it with one of these.

As said you will get just the unformatted text, nothing more.

I suggested you TWO apps, the first one is "real" text extractor, the second is a "wild guess", that could have worked (but didn't).

The.wbk is just an extension.

Make a copy of the .wbk.

Change it's extension to .doc.

Try opening it with the "specific" word recovery program you want to test, like this one:

http://www.repairmyword.com/

It is possible that the "recover text from any file" from within word failed because of file access problems, do a copy of the file on another drive and make sure you have nothing running that may be using the file, and that you have full prmissions/credentials on the file, and try re-running it.

jaclaz