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.
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After all the work, did Open Office actually solve the problem (i.e. opening the corrupted file)?
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