OpenOffice Recovery – Recover Data from Corrupt OpenOffice Files

Like Microsoft Office suite, OpenOffice suite is also popular among desktop users. Though MS Office suite is the highly preferred productivity software, some users still feel OpenOffice is as good as or better than MS Office suite. It really makes sense for your organization to choose free and community-based software instead of purchasing a commercial Office suite provided by Microsoft. OpenOffice is provided by Apache as the leading open-source office software suite. The suite contains various components for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It’s available in many languages so maximum users can use it all around the world. Also, OpenOffice can work on all types of computers, i.e. Windows, Mac, and Linux.

 

OpenOffice stores all the data created by its applications in an international open standard format. Also, it can read and write files from common applications included in other Office suite. Unlike the Microsoft Office suite, you can download it free of cost and use it for any purpose.

Below is the list of components included in OpenOffice suite:

OpenOffice Base (.ODB)

OpenOffice Base program provides database tools for day-to-day work along with a simple user interface. It works the same as other popular database applications. By using OpenOffice Base, you can create and edit forms, reports, queries, tables, views, relations, etc. There are many new features in OpenOffice Base program like the ability for analyzing and editing relationships from a diagram view. HSQLDB is the default relational database engine used by Base. Also, it can use dBASE, MS Access, MySQL, Oracle, and any ODBC- or JDBC-compliant database.

OpenOffice Calc (.ODS)

OpenOffice Calc is a spreadsheet program that has all the advanced analysis, charting and decision-making features that are available in a high-end spreadsheet. It provides you with more than 300 functions for executing multiple operations related to finance, statistics, mathematics, etc. By using OpenOffice Calc, you can open and work with Microsoft Excel workbooks and save them in Excel formats (XLS & XLSX). Also, it allows you to export spreadsheets to other formats like PDF and HTML.

OpenOffice Impress (.ODP)

OpenOffice Impress is a presentation program that provides all the common multimedia presentation tools like special effects, animation, drawing tools, etc. You can enhance the slideshows created by the Impress tool with the special effects of Font work like text, audio, and video clips. Impress is highly compatible with all file formats created by the Microsoft PowerPoint tool. Also, you can save their work in various graphics formats including SWF (Shockwave Flash Movie).

OpenOffice Math (.ODF)

OpenOffice Math is a formula and equation editor used to create complex equations including symbols or characters not available in standard font sets. The most common use of Math program is to create formulas in other documents like Writer and Impress files. Also, it can work as a stand-alone application. It uses the standard Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) for saving formulas so that you can add them to web pages and other documents not created by OpenOffice.

OpenOffice Draw (.ODG)

OpenOffice Draw is a drawing tool for creating vector graphics. It can produce everything whatever you want, i.e. from simple diagrams or flowcharts to 3D artwork. The Smart Connectors feature of Draw tool allows you to define their own connection points. By using OpenOffice Draw, you can create drawings to use them in any other OpenOffice components. Also, it allows you to create your own clipart and you can add it to the gallery. You can import graphics from other file formats with ease, and save them into more 20 file formats which include PNG, HTML, PDF, and Flash.

OpenOffice Writer (.ODT)

OpenOffice Writer is a word processor program that can create letters, books, reports, newsletters, brochures, and all other types of documents. It’s a feature-rich tool that allows you to insert graphics and objects from other components into the Writer documents. You can also connect it to their email clients. By using the OpenOffice Writer tool, you can export files into multiple formats, such as HTML, XHTML, XML, PDF, etc. Also, it supports several versions of Microsoft Word files.

Corruption in OpenOffice Files & Documents

Just like Microsoft Office suite, the files created by OpenOffice are prone to corruption. There are various reasons which may cause corruption of OpenOffice files. If your OpenOffice files are corrupt, you just can’t open or access them until unless you repair them. The most common reasons for corruption are virus infection, bugs attack, storage media failure, abruptly system shutdown, software malfunction, forcefully cancellation of OpenOffice program and sometimes human errors/mistakes.

How to recover data from corrupt OpenOffice files?

If you’re having the backup for your OpenOffice files, you can easily restore them from it. The backup files contain all the copies of your OpenOffice files which you can restore at any time in the event of data loss due to accidental deletion or corruption. But if you don’t have the backup, it might be difficult for you to recover data from OpenOffice files. You can try the following tricks to recover OpenOffice data:

• You can try to open the corrupt OpenOffice file in the latest version of OpenOffice.org. If you don’t have the latest version, you can download it for free from the Internet. In the case of minor corruption, this trick will open the corrupt OpenOffice files.
• You can also try to insert the corrupt OpenOffice file into a new one. How? Just open a blank file in OpenOffice, and go to Insert > File menu. Now you can insert your corrupt OpenOffice file here in this new file
  Note: If you’re trying to insert an ODS file (spreadsheet), go to Insert > Sheet from the File menu.
• You can try to find backups if you’ve checked the “Always create backups” option earlier in the OpenOffice settings. The default location where OpenOffice keeps the backup of all your files is: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\OpenOffice.org\user\backup
• Browse the above location to check your file(s). If you find the file, copy it somewhere and open it in OpenOffice.
• You can try to recover data from corrupt OpenOffice file by changing its extension to ZIP extension. You can easily change the extension of your OpenOffice file (like ODT, ODS, ODP, ODG, ODB and ODF). After changing the OpenOffice file to ZIP file extension, you can open the file using WinZip or WinRAR. You can see a bunch of files, and one of them is content.xml. You can open this file in any hex editor (010 editor) to find your text.
• You can try to recover data from the temporary file. Just browse this location: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Temp
• In the temporary files’ folder, you’ll see lots of files and folders. You need to sort the results by the Date Modified column. Try to find out the OpenOffice file. If you find the file, rename it with ZIP extension and follow the instructions given in point 4
• In no trick works for you, this means corruption is severe and you have to use a professional recovery solution now.

Complete Range of OpenOffice Recovery Software

The OpenOffice Recovery software is the complete range of recovery tools for corrupt OpenOffice files. This software range contains:

OpenOffice Base Recovery

OpenOffice Base Recovery software to repair corrupt database files saved with ODB extension. It can successfully restore forms, reports, queries, tables, views, relations, etc from corrupt ODB files, and save them into new files. OpenOffice Base Recovery software to repair corrupt database files saved with ODB extension. It can successfully restore forms, reports, queries, tables, views, relations, etc from corrupt ODB files, and save them into new files.

OpenOffice Calc Recovery

OpenOffice Calc Recovery software to repair corrupt spreadsheet files saved with ODS extension. It can successfully restore rows and column information with text, images, text formatting, Unicode characters, hyperlinks, tables, graphs, charts, etc. from corrupt ODS files, and save them into new files.

OpenOffice Impress Recovery

OpenOffice Impress Recovery software to repair corrupt presentation files saved with ODP extension. It can successfully restore slides, master slides, images, backgrounds, animations, embedded objects, slide text, Unicode characters, text formatting, etc. from corrupt ODP files, and save them into new files.

OpenOffice Math Recovery

OpenOffice Math Recovery software to repair corrupt Math documents saved with ODF extension. It can successfully restore formulae, equations, text formatting, page orientation, page layout, Unicode characters, etc. from corrupt ODF files, and save them into new files.OpenOffice Base Recovery

OpenOffice Draw Recovery

OpenOffice Draw Recovery software to repair corrupt drawing files saved with ODG extension. It can successfully restore images, text, word art, various designs & styles, etc. from corrupt ODG files, and save them into new files.

OpenOffice Base Recovery

OpenOffice Writer Recovery software to repair corrupt documents saved with ODT extension. It can successfully restore text, text formatting, page orientations, page layout, graphics, images, headers, footers, Unicode characters, hyperlinks, image objects, special characters, tables, etc. from corrupt ODT files, and save them into new files.

Conclusion

All OpenOffice Recovery software are available with the demo version for free evaluation. So before you can purchase the licensed version, you must download free demo version. By using demo version, you can see what you could actually recover from the corrupt OpenOffice files before you can pay for the software.

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