Can't open docx file - file is corrupted

A little while ago, I had a weird situation where three Microsoft Office files sitting on my desktop suddenly got corrupted. Two of them had these symbols—"~$"—tacked onto the front of their names, replacing the first two letters, while the third one kept its original title. Now, every single one of those files is stuck at just 162 bytes. When I try to open them (I happen to be running Microsoft Office in American right now), I get an error saying "file _____ cannot be opened because of content issues." If I dig into the details, it just tells me the file is corrupted and won't open.

I’ve tried the standard troubleshooting steps, but nothing has worked. I haven't touched any specialized recovery software yet; most of it seems overpriced or unreliable, and I generally prefer keeping my PC lean by avoiding unnecessary bloatware. I'd rather not go overboard with random installs if I can help it.

Has anyone else run into something like this?

Even if you think these files are a lost cause, I’m really curious about the "why." What actually causes this kind of corruption, and is there any way to salvage the text inside?

I don't necessarily suspect a virus or anything like that—it happened quite some time ago, so I put it off, but now that I'm looking into it, I'm genuinely intrigued. It’s not a massive emergency, and losing the data wouldn't break the bank, but there is some useful info in there. Beyond that, I just want to understand the mechanics behind why this happens in the first place. 🤔

One of the three is particularly strange. One of them has a bizarre name; besides the "~$" prefix, the rest is just a jumble of Latin characters. I can't tell if it was an existing file that got renamed or something entirely new that appeared. That specific one might actually contain something important, which makes the whole mystery even more interesting. Thanks, everyone.

Do you have your settings adjusted to show hidden system files? If so, do your Microsoft Office documents look a bit faded or lighter than usual? If they do, those aren't actually "real" Word documents—they’re just leftover temp files.

Every time you start a new document or work on an existing one, Microsoft Office creates a temporary copy in that same folder, usually starting with some special characters. Normally, when you close the file properly, that copy should just vanish, but sometimes—I guess—it sticks around.
Here’s what I mean.
View on imgur
So, for example: example.docx is the actual document, while ~$example.docx is just a temp file. That ~$example.docx shouldn't really be there at all; it probably stayed behind because of a crash or maybe the computer just shut down unexpectedly.
You’ll need to find where the original files are located—they should pretty much always be in the same folder. I'm not really sure if there's a reliable way to pull the actual content out of those temp files, though.

What happens if you right-click the icon and check Properties? Are those just shortcuts? If they are, you should see the actual path to the real file_____ there.

And why is this happening? It’s possible your file system or even just the header got corrupted. Depending on how old the drive is, your disk might be on its way to the great scrapyard in the sky. Either way, run CrystalDiskInfo to check the health, then run chkdsk on all your partitions and see what it turns up.

As for the files themselves, try opening them with Notepad. You might catch a few recognizable words in that mess of gibberish and get a clue about what you're actually looking at...

George Sanders37 said:Do you have your settings adjusted to show hidden system files? If so, do your Microsoft Office documents look a bit faded or lighter than usual? If they do, those aren't actually "real" Word documents—they’re just leftover temp files.

Every time you start a new document or work on an existing one, Microsoft Office creates a temporary copy in that same folder, usually starting with some special characters. Normally, when you close the file properly, that copy should just vanish, but sometimes—I guess—it sticks around.
Here’s what I mean.
View on imgur
So, for example: example.docx is the actual document, while ~$example.docx is just a temp file. That ~$example.docx shouldn't really be there at all; it probably stayed behind because of a crash or maybe the computer just shut down unexpectedly.
You’ll need to find where the original files are located—they should pretty much always be in the same folder. I'm not really sure if there's a reliable way to pull the actual content out of those temp files, though.

The icons don't look faded like they do in your screenshot.
Those were .docx files sitting on my desktop that suddenly changed—it happened quite a while ago. They ended up with names starting with "~$" instead of their original titles, and each one was only about 162 bytes.

George Sanders37 said:Do you have your settings adjusted to show hidden system files? If so, do your Microsoft Office documents look a bit faded or lighter than usual? If they do, those aren't actually "real" Word documents—they’re just leftover temp files.

Every time you start a new document or work on an existing one, Microsoft Office creates a temporary copy in that same folder, usually starting with some special characters. Normally, when you close the file properly, that copy should just vanish, but sometimes—I guess—it sticks around.
Here’s what I mean.
View on imgur
So, for example: example.docx is the actual document, while ~$example.docx is just a temp file. That ~$example.docx shouldn't really be there at all; it probably stayed behind because of a crash or maybe the computer just shut down unexpectedly.
You’ll need to find where the original files are located—they should pretty much always be in the same folder. I'm not really sure if there's a reliable way to pull the actual content out of those temp files, though.

That makes sense, but I don't think that's what happened here.

George Sanders37 said:Do you have your settings adjusted to show hidden system files? If so, do your Microsoft Office documents look a bit faded or lighter than usual? If they do, those aren't actually "real" Word documents—they’re just leftover temp files.

Every time you start a new document or work on an existing one, Microsoft Office creates a temporary copy in that same folder, usually starting with some special characters. Normally, when you close the file properly, that copy should just vanish, but sometimes—I guess—it sticks around.
Here’s what I mean.
View on imgur
So, for example: example.docx is the actual document, while ~$example.docx is just a temp file. That ~$example.docx shouldn't really be there at all; it probably stayed behind because of a crash or maybe the computer just shut down unexpectedly.
You’ll need to find where the original files are located—they should pretty much always be in the same folder. I'm not really sure if there's a reliable way to pull the actual content out of those temp files, though.

But how am I supposed to find the "originals" if I thought these *were* the originals before they suddenly became corrupted or whatever? I tried using "find files" for the same names, but nothing else shows up except these three. And they were right on my desktop. Like I mentioned, this was a long time ago, so it isn't a hard drive issue like the user suggested, and no other files were affected.

darkowl72 said:What happens if you right-click the icon and check Properties? Are those just shortcuts? If they are, you should see the actual path to the real file_____ there.

And why is this happening? It’s possible your file system or even just the header got corrupted. Depending on how old the drive is, your disk might be on its way to the great scrapyard in the sky. Either way, run CrystalDiskInfo to check the health, then run chkdsk on all your partitions and see what it turns up.

As for the files themselves, try opening them with Notepad. You might catch a few recognizable words in that mess of gibberish and get a clue about what you're actually looking at...

Opening them in Notepad or New York City just shows gibberish.
Every single file mentions Times New Roman, which I'm pretty sure is just a font name. But I know for a fact I didn't use that font in any of these documents. How can I be so sure? Simple: I never use that font, and I actually only just learned yesterday that 🙂is its name.

darkowl72 said:What happens if you right-click the icon and check Properties? Are those just shortcuts? If they are, you should see the actual path to the real file_____ there.

And why is this happening? It’s possible your file system or even just the header got corrupted. Depending on how old the drive is, your disk might be on its way to the great scrapyard in the sky. Either way, run CrystalDiskInfo to check the health, then run chkdsk on all your partitions and see what it turns up.

As for the files themselves, try opening them with Notepad. You might catch a few recognizable words in that mess of gibberish and get a clue about what you're actually looking at...

File type: Microsoft Word document (.docx)
Location: C:\Users\USER\Desktop

darkowl72 said:What happens if you right-click the icon and check Properties? Are those just shortcuts? If they are, you should see the actual path to the real file_____ there.

And why is this happening? It’s possible your file system or even just the header got corrupted. Depending on how old the drive is, your disk might be on its way to the great scrapyard in the sky. Either way, run CrystalDiskInfo to check the health, then run chkdsk on all your partitions and see what it turns up.

As for the files themselves, try opening them with Notepad. You might catch a few recognizable words in that mess of gibberish and get a clue about what you're actually looking at...

Wait, what exactly happened? 🙂

darkowl72 As requested:
Depending on how much space you have left, your hard drive might just be checking out for good.

It definitely isn't, and won't be for quite a while. It’s not exactly ancient—I didn't just pick it up "the other day"—but this all went down a long time ago, so that's certainly not the culprit. Even if the drive had died a week ago, it wouldn't be the cause given how much time has passed since then.

darkowl72 said:What happens if you right-click the icon and check Properties? Are those just shortcuts? If they are, you should see the actual path to the real file_____ there.

And why is this happening? It’s possible your file system or even just the header got corrupted. Depending on how old the drive is, your disk might be on its way to the great scrapyard in the sky. Either way, run CrystalDiskInfo to check the health, then run chkdsk on all your partitions and see what it turns up.

As for the files themselves, try opening them with Notepad. You might catch a few recognizable words in that mess of gibberish and get a clue about what you're actually looking at...

I can certainly handle that separately, regardless of everything else.

I actually tried using that "Recover Text from Any File" feature, but it didn't yield any results. It was a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack without a magnet.

I’ve been seeing all these data recovery tools floating around online, but it's hard to tell which ones are legit and which are just total scams. I'm ideally looking for something free. A lot of them seem to offer "demo" versions where you can preview your files, but then they block you from actually saving anything until you pay up. If that's the case, I wouldn't mind just downloading one to see what's there—if I can just manually copy the text into a new Microsoft Word doc, I'll save myself the trouble of buying it.

I just hope that software doesn't start glitching out on my other files just to trick me into buying the full suite. I’m not exactly one for conspiracy theories, but in this cutthroat US tech market, you never know what small firms might try. It would be like them intentionally corrupting files just to boost the chances of me upgrading to the premium product. Just a random thought—I'm sure some of you tech experts will have a better take on it.

Joshua Cooper18 said:File type: Microsoft Word document (.docx)
Location: C:\Users\USER\Desktop

Wait, what exactly happened? 🙂

darkowl72 As requested:
Depending on how much space you have left, your hard drive might just be checking out for good.

It definitely isn't, and won't be for quite a while. It’s not exactly ancient—I didn't just pick it up "the other day"—but this all went down a long time ago, so that's certainly not the culprit. Even if the drive had died a week ago, it wouldn't be the cause given how much time has passed since then.

I can certainly handle that separately, regardless of everything else.

I actually tried using that "Recover Text from Any File" feature, but it didn't yield any results. It was a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack without a magnet.

I’ve been seeing all these data recovery tools floating around online, but it's hard to tell which ones are legit and which are just total scams. I'm ideally looking for something free. A lot of them seem to offer "demo" versions where you can preview your files, but then they block you from actually saving anything until you pay up. If that's the case, I wouldn't mind just downloading one to see what's there—if I can just manually copy the text into a new Microsoft Word doc, I'll save myself the trouble of buying it.

I just hope that software doesn't start glitching out on my other files just to trick me into buying the full suite. I’m not exactly one for conspiracy theories, but in this cutthroat US tech market, you never know what small firms might try. It would be like them intentionally corrupting files just to boost the chances of me upgrading to the premium product. Just a random thought—I'm sure some of you tech experts will have a better take on it.

😁 You'll be busy patching things up long before you even figure out what caused the mess in the first place.

I didn't end up fixing the issue, though I didn't push too hard since the file content wasn't vital anyway. It’s just frustrating because there's no clear reason why it happened—it feels a bit ungrateful when things just break without warning. I didn't go too far down the rabbit hole, partly because the files are sitting at only 162 bytes now, so there isn't much left to salvage. I did a quick search online, but there aren't many solid fixes out there; most results lead to paid forums or those "free" repair tools that always feel a bit sketchy to me.