Using a GUI interface and a Perl coded back end, Corrupt DOCX Salvager will often be able to extract text from damaged or corrupted Word 2007/2010 docx files where Word 2007/2010 fails. It can also be simply used as a viewer of the text in a docx file without having Word 2007/2010. The extracted text can even be edited in the interface. Additionally it now has a pre-extraction zip repair step and an "Alternatives" menu that improves its usefulness.

Word 2007/2010 files are really conventionally zipped collections of mostly XML files. XML is not tolerant of file corruption. The text from a Word 2007/2010 document is found in the document.xml file within the larger zipped collection. From the errors it generates Word 2007/2010 appears to be using both an inadequately corruption tolerant unzipper as well as an inadequate corruption tolerant XML reading algorithm to salvage text from the mentioned XML file within corrupt docx files.

Corrupt DOCX Salvager on the other hand uses a more corruption tolerant unzipper and a corruption tolerant XML reading algorithm as well, succeeding where MS Word fails.

This program requires the installation of the Microsoft .Net version 2 framework.