Files cannot be opened on the computer, what should I do? Failed to open the file - three options for solving the problem Failed to open the file, what to do

Office Open XML is a series of document formats created and used in MSOffice. These include:

• .docx
• .ooxml
• .xlsx
• .pptx

There are known cases where problems occur when opening and editing a file. This article will discuss the main reasons for the error “The OFFICE Open XML file cannot be opened due to errors in its contents” when opening, as well as how to solve this problem.

Screenshot of the error "The OFFICE Open XML file cannot be opened due to errors in its contents"

Causes of errors in Word

The most common error when opening a file with the .docx extension is as follows: “The file OfficeOpen XML.docx cannot be opened due to errors in its contents.” In place of “Office Open XML”, accordingly, there should be the name of the current document with which problems arose.

The problem may occur suddenly or have some underlying cause, such as problems with the last time you saved the file or a problem with the last time you edited the file. Regardless of the specifics of the problem, this problem can be solved using general methods.

How to fix "The OFFICE Open XML file cannot be opened due to errors in its contents"

First, you need to analyze what types of files are in the document and which of them need to be recovered. An Office Open XML document can contain the following types of information:

• text data;
• Images;
• hyperlinks;
• tables;
• diagrams;
• various forms;
• bookmarks and much more.

Text data is the easiest to recover. To open the following data type, you can use the Notepad++ text editor, which has line numbering and syntax highlighting. When using this program, all formatting of the .docx file will be lost, however, it will be possible to save the data and restore it.

Another way to restore an Office Open XML document using Adobe In Design:

1. change the file extension (.docx or .xml to .txt);
2. open the InDesign program and create a new text frame in it, where you drag the file with the new extension .txt with the cursor;
3. use the opened data or use the search for specific text using the “find and replace” function.

File recovery using built-in Windows functions

Regardless of the installed version of Windows, each assembly assumes the presence of such a simple editor as Word Pad. It does not have extensive text formatting options, but it can be useful in such situations. In order to use this program, you need to right-click on the document and in the list that opens, click on “Open with...”. A WordPad program icon will appear in the window that appears, which will help you open not only text information, but also images with hyperlinks.

Using Xml Pad

A free utility that can be freely downloaded online. This program is easy to install, it allows you to view and edit several types of files, but we are only interested in .xml, so we need to click on it. Then you need to open the “broken” file using this program and start editing. The main advantage of this program is that it shows the line that causes the error when opening the file. In some cases, it is enough to delete or edit this line to return the file to working condition. If this method does not work, you will have to extract all the text data, transfer it to a new file and save it, creating new formatting manually.

Hello friends. Excuse me for such a not very original title, but I wanted to reveal the entire topic of the article as accurately as possible. I want to write today about what to do when you download a file from the Internet, but it does not open on the computer, I think that if you have landed on this page, then you have exactly the same problem. Well, let's solve the issue :).

Below I will show you what files that simply cannot open on your computer look like. But you cannot view them because you do not have a special program installed that supports this or that format. And among the standard operating system tools there is not such a program.

Let's look at all this with an example and screenshots. I think it will be better and clearer this way.

Opening an unknown file

1. You downloaded a file that doesn’t want to come off, it looks like this:

When you try to open it, the following window will appear:

2. You can select “ Find a match online“, and if a program for this file is found, you can download it and the file will open. Well, if the program is not found, then you can search manually.

Let's look at an example using the same popular format .pdf, which cannot be opened by the standard operating system tool, and which everyone desperately needs to view.

3. We look at what extension is indicated at the end of the file, if you have hidden the display of extensions, then read this article. And we look in Yandex or Google for a program to open a specific file. If, for example, you have a .pdf format, then write how to open the pdf or “how to open (and your file extension)“. We open a couple of sites in the search and download a program that can open one or another format. In the case of .pdf, most likely you will have to download.

4. Download the program, install it and the file should already change its appearance to this one.

Surely everyone has experienced a situation in their life when for some reason the file you need did not open on your computer. Suppose you were sent some important document or presentation by mail, or you downloaded a book from the Internet that you have long wanted to read, but you cannot open it. In such cases, a reasonable question arises as to why the file does not open, which we will try to answer in this article.

Find out the file extension

If you cannot open a file, then the first thing you need to do is find out the file type:

1. Open the folder with the downloaded file on your computer.
2. Right-click on the file you are interested in and select "Properties".
3. In the "General" tab, in the "File type" column, its type and extension will be indicated.

Now you can go directly to solving the problem of why downloaded files do not open.

Lack of the necessary program on the computer

The most common reason why files on your computer won't open is that you don't have a program that can read them. Search the Internet for information about which program can be used to open a file with the specified extension. For example, such popular text document formats as .doc and .docx will open only if you have one of the versions of Microsoft Office Word installed on your computer, and to open a document in pdf format you must use Adobe Reader.

The file was damaged

Another reason why a file may not open is if it is damaged. Such problems arise when a file is incorrectly written to external media or saved on a computer. It is usually impossible to recover a damaged file. There are special programs that are used to restore files or at least partially restore the information contained in them, but they are ineffective. The simplest and most obvious way to fix this problem is to delete the file and write it again. If we are talking about any Windows system file, you can try to restore damaged files by eliminating errors using the built-in tools of the operating system.

File association violation

On any computer running Windows or Mac OS X, there are file associations according to which each type of file is opened by a specific program. These settings are set by the system by default. However, sometimes file associations are broken.

Those who have a question about why exe files do not open have probably encountered just such a problem. In order to eliminate such a violation, it is necessary:

1. Launch the registry editor on your computer. To do this, launch the “Run” utility and enter the “regedit” command in the window that opens.
2. In the window that opens, you will see a catalog on the left. Go to the path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts.
3. Then, in the list of extensions that opens, select the file type you are interested in (in our case, exe) and delete the user choice folder.
4. Next, you will need to download from the Internet and run on your computer a reg file, which is responsible for restoring associations of this file type and the problem will be resolved.

When downloading another file from the Internet, many of us do not think about the fact that the file on the computer may simply not open. And this happens, I must say, not so rarely. The fact is that there are a huge number of file formats, each of which is opened by the system using special programs. If you have the required program on your computer, the file will open (unless, of course, it was damaged during downloading). If the required program is not available, then problems will arise with opening the file.

Therefore, it is logical, before downloading a file, to inquire about its format, which can be determined by its extension. If you know that the necessary program to open a file is not installed on your computer, it is better to look for a file in a different extension (for example, an audio clip in the most common mp3 format or an image in jpeg format).

If the file is not in the required format, or you do not want to search, you can go another way.

Download from the Internet (or, for example, some storage medium) a file of a format unknown to your computer and try to open it.

When you try to open a file, Windows will notify you: “The following file could not be opened: file name.” You will be asked to either select programs from the list manually, or search for the desired program on the Internet, or abandon the attempt to open the file (Cancel button).

If you decide to open the file, you must check the “manually select a program from the list” option.

If the program you need is not in the list of programs presented, but you know that it is on the computer, you need to click the Browse button and find what you need manually.

If you check the box next to the phrase “use for all files of this type,” then using the selected program you will be able to open all files of this type in the future.

If you don’t have the required program on your computer, then you need to check the “search for matches on the Internet” checkbox.

There may be another situation when the file does not open when working, for example, with Microsoft Windows. This usually happens after the user forcibly quits a task using the Task Manager.

The reason for this problem is that in addition to tasks in Windows, there are also processes (memory address space that is allocated for executing certain procedures). Thus, one task can activate several processes at once. For example, a Word task can work simultaneously with several text documents (respectively, with several processes). In the event of a forced termination of the Word editor (the task is removed), the process of processing the document open to it remains in the system memory - Windows believes that the document is still open in the editor window (while the editor itself is not running).

In order to solve this problem, you need to open the Task Manager window (Ctrl+Alt+Del), select the Processes tab. In the list provided by the system, you should select the file processing process that does not open and cancel it by clicking the End process button. However, you can simply restart your computer.