Do these error messages audio familiar?

  • The file is corrupt and cannot be opened.
  • The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.
  • There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged.

A computer file is but a set of information, organized in a manner that programs can open and read it. If parts of the file's information are disorganized or missing, then information technology becomes unreadable---in other words, corrupted or damaged.

Corruption tin occur in several ways. Maybe the file was created by buggy software that wrote the file incorrectly. Sometimes a program needs to go along a file open during employ, and if the program crashes, the file could get jumbled. Viruses can as well damage files.

Unfortunately, repairing a corrupted or damaged file is hard. The risk of success depends on how flexible the file format is, how much information is missing or muddled, and how smart the recovery software is. Got a corrupted or damaged file? Here are a few tools y'all can try.

Stellar Microsoft Role Repair Toolkit is a collection of three utilities that each specialize in repairing a dissimilar file type: Discussion documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations. For office workers and desk-bound jockeys, this is the best app for dealing with broken files.

When you run the app, you lot tin can either scan your entire organisation for corrupted and damaged files or specify a specific file that y'all want to repair. Notably, Stellar File Repair Toolkit can repair corrupted files even if they are password-protected. It'south truly a ane-click affair.

Unfortunately, information technology'due south a business utility sold at a premium cost. While you can download it costless of accuse, you can merely scan and preview cleaved files. To actually unlock the repair functionality, it will cost $69.

Repair Toolbox isn't a single app but rather a selection of 22 single-purpose utilities, with each i designed to repair a different kind of file. It'south a double-edged sword: inconvenient if you want to install all of the repair apps, convenient if you lot only need one or 2 of them.

The utilities all operate in the same basic fashion: y'all indicate the app to the broken file, provide a name for the resulting repaired file, and click Repair. Supported formats include Discussion, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, PDF, Null, RAR, Illustrator, Photoshop, and many more.

Unfortunately, Repair Toolbox is not entirely gratis---the demo versions of each utility come with some restrictions. For instance, the PDF utility demo only saves the first folio of a document, while the Zero utility demo only shows if it's repairable and doesn't actually save.

3. Hetman File Repair

Despite its proper noun, Hetman File Repair isn't a general file repair tool---information technology focuses specifically on repairing broken epitome files. Note that this isn't the aforementioned affair as retrieving deleted photos or recovering photos from a corrupted device. If you have an image file that can't exist opened, that'south when you employ this tool.

Hetman File Repair can repair corrupted JPEGs (without sacrificing prototype quality or EXIF data), TIFFs (both compressed and uncompressed varieties), as well as BMPs and PNGs (without recompressing the image data). It even has a smashing Wizard that walks yous through the steps, making it easy enough for anyone to apply.

While you can scan files for free, Hetman File Repair requires a license to actually repair and save images. The Abode edition is $60 for personal use and the Function edition is $140 for business organisation use.

four. Digital Video Repair

Digital Video Repair is a gratuitous tool that can fix cleaved MP4, MOV, and AVI videos as long as they are encoded in Xvid, DivX, MPEG4, 3ivx, or Angel Potion. Even so, it comes with bundleware for an online market enquiry community called RelevantKnowledge. It's a trustworthy organization, then don't worry nearly malware---nosotros're merely warning yous so y'all aren't caught off guard.

Something to continue in mind when using Digital Video Repair: if the video file is missing frames, this tool can't magically generate those frames out of sparse air. Instead, it "fixes" the file in such a way that it won't exist jittery, glitchy, or cause your video player to lock up. It also allows you to seek through the video, which often isn't possible when damage.

5. Organization File Checker

What do yous practice if the corruption or damage occurs to a system-level file? While this isn't as common now as it was a decade agone, it tin all the same happen---and if it does, your best bet is to use the utility that comes with Windows itself: System File Checker.

Fortunately, System File Checker is very easy to run. Launch an elevated Control Prompt (printing Win + X, then select Command Prompt (Admin) in the menu), then type the post-obit command:

          sfc /scannow

That's literally all you lot have to do. It may take anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes to run the full scan depending on your computer hardware, so sit down tight and allow it do its thing.

System File Checker is only 1 of several important commands every Windows user should know. By repairing corrupted and missing organization files, information technology can gear up a whole host of other bug, including fixing Windows 10 errors and bad system config finish codes.

Remember to Keep Your Expectations Low

At best, these tools will only be able to repair minor bug. If entire chunks of information are missing from a file, at that place'south no way for a tool to know how to fill those gaps. And don't exist tricked into thinking that a more expensive app will solve more issues! Price has cipher to practise with it.

When I have a corrupted or damaged file, I consider information technology dead. If a repair tool tin can bring it back to life, then that's a wonderful bonus---simply I never look information technology to happen. Mostly, it won't.

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Near The Author

Dan Price (1608 Articles Published)

Dan joined MakeUseOf in 2014 and has been Partnerships Director since July 2020. Reach out to him for inquires almost sponsored content, affiliate agreements, promotions, and whatever other forms of partnership. You tin can besides observe him roaming the show floor at CES in Las Vegas every year, say hi if you're going. Prior to his writing career, he was a Financial Consultant.

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