Troubleshooting Microsoft Publisher files
Troubleshooting Microsoft Publisher files
Today I encountered a problem that initially looked easy to solve but quickly turned into a challenging situation - a friend's mother had their Microsoft Office Publisher document (a manuscript they were drafting) somehow damaged during transfer. The issue occurred when moving the file from one USB drive to another, resulting in corruption and an error stating "Publisher cannot open this file." The document has always been saved to a USB flash drive, yet it never appeared on the PC. My plan was to use a general data recovery tool or attempt to recover previous versions, but that failed because of the flash storage nature. I managed to verify that the file size matches what should be there. I’ve been searching for solutions, focusing on repair tools or extraction methods, but only two apps were mentioned. One of them, "SoftwareRecovery for Publisher," showed no progress at all (all text replaced with a placeholder). Could anyone provide guidance on handling this?
The PC used to create it runs Windows 7 and the software is Office 2007 (I was surprised to learn that too).
P.S. The file size is approximately 550MB.
I'm curious if the issue might not be a file corruption but rather the file being too large for Publisher 2007. Could you check if a newer version of Publisher is available to try? If not, it seems LibreOffice's "Draw" tool can open and modify Microsoft .pub files.
Also, to fix corrupted files, begin by running the Windows Disk Check utility on the problematic USB drive.
When copying from one USB to another, does the file remain on the original USB? And regardless of the file's size, kindly ask the user to handle things more carefully. First, consider backups, and avoid relying solely on a flash drive as your main storage.
I have MS Office 2016 with Publisher installed, but the same issue appears when I try to open it... however, the LibreOffice suggestion helped! It doesn't fix the actual .pub file, but I managed to open it (25 minutes loading time o_o) and extract the information into a PDF, which is still great news! Thanks a lot! ^-^
I'm planning a detailed talk with her about the 1-2-3 Backup rule later today... and I really want to upgrade both my laptop and office pack to supported versions as soon as possible.