Tools file repair guides
Reference guides for the file-repair tools we recommend. Installation, recipes, limitations, and license details for each.
All tools
- Complete Guide to 7-Zip for Archive Recovery
A practical reference for 7-Zip — installation, extraction recipes, integrity testing, and what to do when an archive is damaged. Covers ZIP, 7Z, RAR, and TAR.
- Complete Guide to Apache PDFBox for PDF Repair
A practical reference for Apache PDFBox, the Java PDF library and command-line toolkit. Installation, repair patterns, the 2.x to 3.x CLI change, and limits.
- Complete Guide to DataNumen Excel Repair
A practical reference for DataNumen Excel Repair: the tool's strengths on severely damaged and legacy files, batch workflow, free trial limits, pricing, and alternatives.
- Complete Guide to Ghostscript for PDF Recovery
A practical reference for using Ghostscript as a last-resort PDF recovery tool. Installation, re-render recipes, licensing, and what gets lost in the process.
- Complete Guide to LibreOffice for Word and Excel Repair
A practical reference for using LibreOffice to recover damaged Word and Excel files. Installation, headless conversion recipes, repair workflow, and honest limitations.
- Complete Guide to Microsoft's Open and Repair Feature
How to use Excel and Word's built-in Open and Repair feature: where to find it, what Repair vs Extract Data does, when it works, and what to try when it doesn't.
- Complete Guide to pikepdf for PDF Repair in Python
A practical reference for pikepdf, the Python library for PDF repair and transformation. Installation, recipes for batch repair, encryption, page operations, and limits.
- Complete Guide to qpdf for PDF Repair and Transformation
A practical reference for qpdf, the free command-line PDF tool. Installation, recipes for repair, merge, split, rotate, and encrypt, plus honest limitations.
- Complete Guide to Stellar Repair for Excel
A practical reference for Stellar Repair for Excel: when it's worth using, how to install and run it, what the demo limits, pricing, and honest free alternatives.
- Complete Guide to Stellar Repair for Word
An honest reference for Stellar Repair for Word — what it does, when it helps, free alternatives to try first, and what its repair tiers actually mean.