Word: “We can't open the file because we found a problem with its contents”

Why it happens

• The file was cut short, so the index at the end of its ZIP container is missing.
• The main document part is truncated or overwritten.
• The file was saved over or synced while another copy was being written.

Try these first, they're free

1. 1If the file came from email or the web, right-click it, choose Properties, tick Unblock and press OK. Windows blocks downloaded files, and Word then refuses to open them in ways that look like damage.
2. 2Check the file's size. A file of 0 KB holds nothing at all, so look for another copy (the sender, OneDrive version history, a backup).
3. 3In Word, choose File › Open, select the file, click the arrow next to Open and choose Open and Repair.

How we fix it

We rebuild the container from whatever parts survive and recover the readable text of a damaged main part, paragraph by paragraph, so you get a document that opens instead of an error.

On 384 damaged Office files, we recovered 81% of the content; Office's own repair recovered 53%. See the benchmark.

Other messages

• Word found unreadable content
• Repair a corrupted Word document online
• Excel: “We found a problem with some content”
• Excel cannot open the file because the format or extension is not valid