<![CDATA[Tried to recover someone's DOCX files, even unzipped them and everything, but I guess they got moved/copied so many times over 3 decades they just... faded and became broken?]]>Tried to recover someone's DOCX files, even unzipped them and everything, but I guess they got moved/copied so many times over 3 decades they just... faded and became broken? They were moved/copied so much too much data was lost to where they cannot be recovered. Yet another reason why writers, especially, should move to writing in plain text and converting to anything later.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/topic/6e13d8d3-3860-4d8c-af67-c5d1c92ba86c/tried-to-recover-someone-s-docx-files-even-unzipped-them-and-everything-but-i-guess-they-got-moved-copied-so-many-times-over-3-decades-they-just...-faded-and-became-brokenRSS for NodeSun, 25 Oct 2026 02:03:03 GMTSat, 17 Oct 2026 13:33:53 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Tried to recover someone's DOCX files, even unzipped them and everything, but I guess they got moved/copied so many times over 3 decades they just... faded and became broken? on Sat, 17 Oct 2026 14:05:12 GMT]]>@WeirdWriter Agreed! I will continue to use plain text with documents saved on Dropbox, as long as the option exists.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://chaos.social/users/jspath55/statuses/117456628090658391https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://chaos.social/users/jspath55/statuses/117456628090658391Sat, 17 Oct 2026 14:05:12 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Tried to recover someone's DOCX files, even unzipped them and everything, but I guess they got moved/copied so many times over 3 decades they just... faded and became broken? on Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:47:15 GMT]]>@WeirdWriter

Your friend might try reading them in and , both of which will read .docx files. Of the two, LibreOffice is easier if your friend is sighted and not technically minded, because Pandoc runs at the command line. (There are graphical front ends, but they're one more thing to choose and install.)

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.space/users/CppGuy/statuses/117456557517174913https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.space/users/CppGuy/statuses/117456557517174913Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:47:15 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Tried to recover someone's DOCX files, even unzipped them and everything, but I guess they got moved/copied so many times over 3 decades they just... faded and became broken? on Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:39:56 GMT]]>@WeirdWriter
I find that LibreOffice can usually open old Word files that current Word has given up on. I rescued some documents for my mum like this a few years ago. But yeah, plain text is safer.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.me.uk/users/brunogirin/statuses/117456528758747970https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.me.uk/users/brunogirin/statuses/117456528758747970Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:39:56 GMT