How-To

How to Manually Repair Microsoft Office Documents with Office

By Brian Burgess

Updated August 26, 2021

Sometimes Microsoft Office documents get corrupted and won’t open. Here’s a look at how to repair them manually using Office itself.

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) has many advanced features that make it the most popular office suite out there. However, sometimes documents get corrupted and won’t open.

You might not be aware that you can use Office to repair those documents and not use a third-party utility to do it. The feature was introduced back in Office 2003. Here’s how it works.

Note: For this article, I am using Microsoft Word, but the process is similar in the rest of the programs in the suite, too.

Repair Office Documents

Launch Word (or any other Office program) and go to File > Open > Browse and then find the document you need to repair.

Next, select the dropdown in the lower right corner, select Open and Repair, and wait for the process to complete.

It’s worth noting that Office will try to repair corrupt documents automatically, but you sometimes need to do it manually.

For more Office tips and tricks, make sure to check out our Microsoft Office archive.