Missing Text in LibreOffice Writer Document
February 5, 2024 3:50 PM Subscribe
How can I recover text that has mysteriously disappeared from an .odt file I was working on in LibreOffice Writer?
Last time I worked on the file was 1/24. I opened the file today, and it shows a single blank page. However, the word count function at the bottom of the screen still says 1906 words, and the file is the same size as it was last time I worked on it (69kb). It seems like the words are "lost" somewhere in the file, but I can't figure it out. Opened the document in Notepad, but it just gave me a bunch of gibberish with no sign of the original text. Also tried printing the document but I just get a blank page. Any help for recovering the missing text?
Last time I worked on the file was 1/24. I opened the file today, and it shows a single blank page. However, the word count function at the bottom of the screen still says 1906 words, and the file is the same size as it was last time I worked on it (69kb). It seems like the words are "lost" somewhere in the file, but I can't figure it out. Opened the document in Notepad, but it just gave me a bunch of gibberish with no sign of the original text. Also tried printing the document but I just get a blank page. Any help for recovering the missing text?
Any chance the font color has been changed to white?
If not, try saving as a txt file and opening that in Notepad.
If that doesn't work, odt files are actually zip archives, so make a copy of the odt file, rename it by changing the extension to .zip, and unzip like you would any regular zip file to see what's inside. (I think in windows you can just double-click a zip to see what's inside the archive.)
(Note: the reason Notepad showed you gibberish when reading the odt file is that zip files are binary - they're encoded and viewing them in a plain text editor will just show you the code. Inside the odt there will be xml files and plain text files, both of which will be viewable in Notepad, although they might not be formatted in a way that's convenient to read; viewing them in a web browser might give you a better view, of the xml files at least.)
posted by trig at 4:33 PM on February 5 [3 favorites]
If not, try saving as a txt file and opening that in Notepad.
If that doesn't work, odt files are actually zip archives, so make a copy of the odt file, rename it by changing the extension to .zip, and unzip like you would any regular zip file to see what's inside. (I think in windows you can just double-click a zip to see what's inside the archive.)
(Note: the reason Notepad showed you gibberish when reading the odt file is that zip files are binary - they're encoded and viewing them in a plain text editor will just show you the code. Inside the odt there will be xml files and plain text files, both of which will be viewable in Notepad, although they might not be formatted in a way that's convenient to read; viewing them in a web browser might give you a better view, of the xml files at least.)
posted by trig at 4:33 PM on February 5 [3 favorites]
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posted by Saxon Kane at 3:51 PM on February 5