How Do I Recover Doc. with Text Recovery Converter in Word on Mac

When I try to open a Word document, an error message says “Word was unable to read this document. It may be corrupt. Try one or more of the following: Open and Repair the file. Open the file with the Text Recovery converter.” What and where is Text Recovery Converter? How can I use it to recover my corrupted document on my Mac?

Text Recovery Converter is a built-in feature in Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel, and other applications. This feature is used to extract and recover as much readable content as possible from a corrupted document. It greatly reduces the risk of file loss.

To find and use the Text Recovery Converter in your Microsoft Word application, follow these steps:

  1. Open Microsoft Word on your Mac and click File on the top menu bar.

  2. Click Open and choose your corrupted Word document.

  3. Navigate to the bottom right corner, and click to expand the Open dropdown menu. Then, click Recover Text.

Can Text Recovery Converter in Word help me recover the corrupted document completely?

No, the Text Recovery Converter is only used to extract text from a Word document with a corrupted format and paste it to a new Word file. It only tries its best to rescue the contents of that document rather than one-to-one copy the contents of the corrupted file to a new one. Some words or phrases on the corrupted file may not be recovered. :sweat_smile:

Can the Text Recovery Converter in Word restore the deleted document?

I never heard that Word’s Text Recovery Converter feature can recover deleted or lost documents. It’s just a word editing tool but not a data recovery software.

Usually, if you delete a document from your Mac, it will disappear from the Recent list in your Word application. If you need to restore a deleted Word file, go to the Trash bin and put pack it.

If you directly deleted the file from your Mac or emptied Trash after deletion, I think that only a data recovery tool can help you get back the deleted document.

There are various data recovery tools on the market, such as Stellar Data Recovery for Mac, Recoverit for Mac, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac, etc. I’ve only used iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac ever.

This data recovery tool indeed helped me restore my deleted images and documents after emptying the Trash.

Download and install iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac on your Mac and open it.

Select the macOS - Data (or Macintosh HD - Data) volume that stores your user data and click Search for Lost Data.

After scanning, find your deleted files from the results.

Preview and select them, and then click Recover to get them back.

I suggest you back your Mac with Time Machine or any other backup tool in routine. It is inevitable for us to mistakenly lose important files. Backing up them offers you a guarantee.