My wife experienced the same powerpoint misery I experienced in 2005. She lost power while editing a .ppt file, just a minute or so after saving it. But the crash left a corrupted file that can't be opened. Looking for solutions on the web provides several leads, none of which have actually led to success, but one of which led to a huge "aha!"
One of the suggestions was to try opening the file using Open Office. I went to the open office site, clicked download, and the downloads dialog box started showing 6 hours, 6 hours, 6 hours ... (this is on a mac running snow leopard). I didn't have six hours, so I looked for another download site. Found a site with a .torrent link. As it happens I don't have a BitTorrent client, so I downloaded Vuze, formerly known as Azureus. From the time I started the Vuze download, until I had Open Office installed and running, was less than 10 minutes. Compared to six hours. Plus I was helping someone else download since BitTorrent is all about reciprocating the download with an upload of what you're downloading.
I knew BitTorrent was used for legitimate purposes, but I hadn't had the opportunity to experience it so personally.
Wow, BitTorrent is cool.
This and That
16 hours ago
After all the work, did Open Office actually solve the problem (i.e. opening the corrupted file)?
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