Damaged docx2txt is a freeware recovery tool designed to recover text from corrupt Word 2007 XLSX files. Word 2007 files are actually a collection of zipped XML files and the XML format is somewhat unforgiving of data corruption. This application unzips the partially corrupted XML files and tries to read what it can, not caring about malformed XML. This tool pretty much just dumps the text it finds in the XML file to text.

Corrupt Excel xlsx2csv is similar to the above except it is designed to recover the content of corrupt Excel XLSX files. Again, XSLX files are based on XML files which is unforgiving to data corruption. This application has the ability to maintain the cell formatting and the cells content; including seperate workbooks in a single XLSX file. You can copy and paste the content out of the application or export the entire spreadsheet to CSV.

Both of these applications were originally Perl scripts but have since had a GUI made for them (you will see a command window though). These applications are “mostly portable” as it doesnt need to be installed but requires .NET version 2.

Downloads:
Damaged docx2txt: Download from Official Site – 3.1mb
Corrupt Excel xlsx2csv: Download from Official Site – 3.5mb

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Thanks to the forum member AtYourService for recommending this one.