Media corruption, virus attacks, unexpected system crash or shutdown are few of the most common reasons you can end-up having corrupt Microsoft Word Documents, In this case Microsoft Word would display garbage content or won't let you open the file displaying one of the following errors:

• "This file is not in a recognizable format."
• 'XYZ.doc' cannot be accessed. The file may be read-only, or you may be trying to access a read-only location. Or, the server the document is stored on may not be responding.
• "The document name or path is not valid. Try these suggestions. Check the file permissions for the document or drive. Use the File Open dialog box to locate the document."
• "Word cannot open the document."
• "Word cannot open the document: user does not have access privileges."

In such situation's free utility "Repair My Word" can come handy to recover corrupted data from Microsoft Word files (.doc) with ease, the software is designed to recover text from damaged or corrupt Word files (.doc files), The recovered text can then be saved as an new error free Microsoft Word document.