recover corrupt powerpoint file

Hi there,

I have been trying to recover a corrupt powerpoint file but have been unsuccessful thus far. I have tried to search on the internet for free software tools i can use but mostly its freeware in demo mode ( i have tried officerecovery- recovery 4 powerpoint) which works fine but only recovers part of the file with the rest of the document filled with the word demo. Unfortunately i did not have a backup of the file (very unwise!!!). Does anyone know of any "free" software i can download?

Your help would be gladly appreciated...

Sbale

Oh dear. Do you have any idea how badly corrupted the file is?

Hello sbale,

Try using openoffice , in more than one case I've seen it open .ppt that powerpoint refused to

Thanks guys for your very prompt response...

Bishop: The file seems to be badly damaged, i tried the normal recovery as posted in the microsoft support pages but all this failed hence my search for other third party software...

Nske: I am currently downloading the openoffice software, will let you know once i have tried it if it went well...

Once again thanks for your input...

Hi Guys,

Just installed Open Office but unfortunately it could not open the files, which means they must have been badly damaged/corrupted...
Anyway openoffice seems to be a very cool tool...i'm sure it will come in handy one day...
I'll continue to search for other tools though, it's too early to give up...I had put a lot of work into this project and was just very unlucky to lose it this way...

Once again thanks for your input...

Sorry to hear that. Given your previous comment that the file might be badly corrupted the following might not be much use, but if your file is absolutely vital to you then anything's worth a shot. Create another powerpoint file of similar size and content, save it and open it in a hex editor. Then open your broken one in a second instance of the editor, position the windows side by side and start comparing. Since it won't open at all there's a fair chance the corruption is in the file structure or header information near the beginning or end rather than the content, and with a bit of effort and persistance and a good file to compare against you might be able to get some of it back. At the very least you should be able to see your text in there and copy it out into wordpad or something. If the text is all you want, just rename the dead file to a.txt and open it in wordpad.
I can't think of anything else...