Corrupted .docx file. Word 2007. Can't open the document. Tags mismatch. Help?

Question

The Office Open XML file *.docx cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents.
Details: The name at the end tag of the element must match the element type in the start tag.
Location: Part: /word/document.xml, Line: 2, Column: 3487212
Hmm, I guess I should give some background info and what I've tried so far, right?
The document is in word 2007, Windows 7. Last night, I was in a hurry, and got a lot of things open. I was opening the document to do a few quick spontaneous revisions, but it was so laggy and I was late for an appointment, so I was feeling panicky
and frustrated. In hindsight, it probably wasn't the best option to just force shut the PC down cause word stopped responding in the middle of opening the document. Still, while I'm no Sherlock, I knew stopping it while it's in the middle of saving the document
would bebad, I didn't think stopping it while opening the document (and not really modifying the document at all, at least that was what I thought before), could have drastic consequences! The document's quite
large, a few hundred words, and about 500 or so pages. It's this really big project I was doing at work, for months now really, and because it's somewhat business confidential in nature, I can't exactly share it freely, or I would've uploaded a copy, sorry.
Anyway, I woke up this morning and opened it, and the error came up. By the way, the document was saved in a 2TB external hard with a few disk errors in the past, if that helps, even if I'm pretty much sure its not a problem with the hard. The error
came up... and yeah. I first made a copy, which I've been trying everything on, in case I do end up making things worse. I have no previous versions of it, just a relatively very old backup. Anything less than 80% recovery would set me back weeks with a wage
cut. The good news is that I was able to open the document in WordPad, managing to recover the first 287 pages (131,543 words), with no errors or data loss, and saved it in a separate file. Apparently, according to information I obtained later, MSWord tends
to not open at all when it encounters an error, but Wordpad tends to stop reading the rest of the code once it encounters an error. So, naturally, I assumed (so correct me if I'm wrong), that behind a few sentences I might lose due to the error, the rest could
also be salvageable. I then looked up the problem all over the internet. Read a microsoft article on troubleshooting/recovering corrupted documents (Open & Repair, Draft Mode, Creating Link, Recover text from any file converter, etc). No dice.
I first saw a similar question on answers.microsoft, and tried to use Tony Jollan's Rebuilder, macros enabled and all. Sadly, no luck.
I managed to make my first breakthrough when I found out that .docx was just a .zip file, and could be renamed as such, with the document.xml extracted and manually fixed using an XML editor (not that I knew how to do that, but I was desperate and
willing to learn). So, made another copy, changed extensions, and tried to specifically extract the document.xml. I believe that it is the main body text, right? That is the only thing really necessary for me, since everything I've done so far is entirely
spartan, with no fancy fonts, formatting, header/footer/notes, media objects, formulas, tables, bullet points, numbered lists, etc. All pure sans-serif text, with some Japanese Kanji thrown in. 500 pages of pure text.
I then hit a snag, when WinRAR encountered an error on extracting document.xml, stating that "CRC failed in word\document.xml. The file is corrupt". So I tried to fix this using several ZIP repair programs and stuff. Nothing worked. At
least not so far. Managed to extract an incomplete version of document.xml using WinRAR's 'Keep Broken Files' option when extracting. The extracted
document.xml came up to 3.31 MB while the original in archive is 7.53 MB. Viewed it in the Windows XML Editor which opened up the text in Internet Explorer, a jumble of text with no line breaks or paragraphs. Still, it actually extracted a few pages less than
the open-using-Wordpad method tried earlier. So trying to fix the archive again...
So I decided to give up the manual route for the meantime and focus on readymade solutions. I came across yet another microsoft article, but this one was at least more relevant than the last. It had this auto FixMe thing. I ran it, didn't
work. Apparently, as I found out later, "This fix will work for one specific tag error where there are equations and graphics in the same paragraph AND Office 2010 SP1 has not been applied."
Tried several (read: dozens) corrupt Word recovery software, from freeware to pro trials, to varying degrees of effect, although unsuccessful
in goal. Some failed to read it, saying it was too corrupted for them to handle, the best managed to recover about three-pages-worth less data compared to the Wordpad method. So yeah, anybody with a similar problem, always open it with wordpad first and recover
what you can. That doesn't mean I'm giving up though.
So here I am, tearing my hair out in frustration. Whew, I feel like I told you guys my life story. I guess worst case scenario, I report this to my boss, so I personally or from the company, I/we'll hire a team of professionals to deal with it.
But that's not an ideal scenario. It's gonna be out of my salary either way (the company has a firm policy of 'You reap what you sow'), along with a wage cut for making such an amateurish mistake even with continuous reminders to back it up every two sentences,
so I'd rather avoid that.
I'm currently looking to see whether there's a way to recover a previous version of an overwritten document somehow using a third-party software or something. (I didn't have Windows Backup enabled, so no previous version on Windows). So far, no
autosaved documents on MSWord AutoRecover, even though I have it enabled set to every 3 mins (or maybe I'm just not seeing it since I'm trying to look for it manually?). Or are the temporary files wiped on shutdown? I don't have 'Always save backup copy' option
enabled on word either.
So yeah, an auto fix, or a lengthy answer detailing what exactly I should do (from the very very basics), or a link to a site with such info, would be much appreciated. Seriously :D
Please. Thanks for at least making an effort :)

Answer 1

When a Word document file is corrupted, then you can try several methods to recover it:
1. First of all, you can try the recovery function integrated with Microsoft Word, as follows:
1) On the File menu, click Open.
2) In the Look in list, click the drive, folder, or Internet location that contains the file that you want to open.
3) In the folder list, locate and open the folder that contains the file.
4) Select the file that you want to recover.
5) Click the arrow next to the Open button, and then click Open and Repair.
You may find more information about this at:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/recover-the-text-from-a-damaged-document-HP005189610.aspx (for Word 2003)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/893672/en-us (for Word 2007/2010/2013)
2. If you have multiple corrupt Word documents, then you can use the VBA macro provided in article
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/893672/en-us so that all the files will be opened in "Open and Repair" option automatically.
3. There are also free tools from third-parties that can open and read Microsoft Word documents, for example,
3.1 OpenOffice at http://www.openoffice.org. This is a very famous open source project that is designed to support Office file formats, including Word documents. The software can run under Windows.
3.2 LibreOffice at http://www.LibreOffice.org. Another free office suite.
3.3 AbiWord at http://www.abisource.com. This is a cross-platform tool that works under Unix and Windows.
3.4 Google Drive at https://drive.google.com/ also support to load Word document files.
Sometimes when Word fails to open your document, these tools may be able to open it successfully. If that is the case, then after the document is opened, you can just save it as a new document which will be error-free.
4. For docx files, they are actually a group of files compressed in Zip file format. Therefore, sometimes, if the corruption is only caused by the Zip file, then you can use Zip repair tools such as WinRAR at
http://www.rarlab.com to repair the file, as follows:
4.1 Assuming the corrupt document is a.docx, then you need to rename it to a.zip
4.2 Start WinRAR, go to "Tools > Repair Archive" to repair a.zip and generated a fixed file a_fixed.zip.
4.3 Rename a_fixed.zip back to a_fixed.doc
4.4 Using Word to open a_fixed.doc.
There may still be some warnings when opening the fixed file in Word, just let ignore it and Word will try to open and repair the fixed file. If the file can be opened successfully, then you can just save the contents into another error-free file.
5. If all above methods does not work, then you may try third-party tools such as DataNumen Word Repair at
http://www.datanumen.com/word-repair/
I have used it to repair some word documents successfully. It provides a free demo version so that you can try to see if the data you want can be recovered or not.
Good luck!