Repairing Word documents

If you've been working on a Word document for a long time, it's a nightmare when it suddenly corrupts or won't open. The reasons for this are numerous and usually it's not your fault. If you've ever received any of the following messages then you'll know what I'm talking about: "The document name or path is not valid..."; "Word cannot open the document...."; "Word cannot open the document: user does not have access privileges."; ...and so on. Fortunately, a number of programs are available that attempt to repair a document so you can at least extract the main body of text. They do this with varying degrees of success, but two to try are Kernel for Word, and Word-Repair. The latter is free, while the first has a free evaluation version.