Windows 10: Computer crashed during restart, wordpad document that I saved with 10,000+ words is blank

I had a story I had written in a wordpad document and I saved it before I had to restart because File explorer was being unresponsive. During restart, the computer crashed not sure if this is the right terminology but it's the blue background message with the unhappy smiley face.


The wordpad automatically re-opened upon restart but was blank , or so I thought. I could highlight the document, so it looks like my words are still there but hidden. I tried changing text color, didn't help. I saw a post saying to re-open it in Microsoft word, I tried that, and all I got was "[]" symbols everywhere.


How can I recover my document? It's pretty important to me :

:)

 

word documents saved as wordpad documents


Use 'Save as' and choose from the list of options.

 

word documents saved as wordpad documents


I am using Word 2013 on my laptop. Windows 8 was operating system. Recently upgraded to Windows 10. When I save Word documents now, they are saved as Wordpad documents. (.xml files) Wordpad does not recommend some of the Word formatting and alters the documents.

How do I correct this? I want the save as Word documents, as I did in the past.

Thank you.

 

Wordpad documents being saved to Word

Hi Mike

If RTF documents are opening in Word:

Right click an RTF document, choose 'Open With' - Choose Another App

Important - Check the box marked 'Always use this app to open xxx . . .'

If Wordpad is not in the list, scroll to the bottom and click 'More Apps'

Wordpad should be in that list . . .

Choosing Wordpad form one of those lists will reset the file associations on RTF documents and they should then automatically open in Wordpad . . .