As most users of Microsoft Word know, a small percentage of documents can become unusable. Symptoms of a corrupt document include: problems printing a document, paragraph numbering not working properly, the inability to compare documents, the inability to edit headers or footers, documents which “lock up” when you are editing, etc. CrossFingers can repair documents which are corrupt or damaged, most of the time.

CrossFingers provides two different methods for repairing a damaged or corrupt document. Both methods are based on extensive research of all written and web-based materials, from both Microsoft and other organizations. We developed CrossFingers at the request of a large international law firm that was experiencing significant problems with documents. The firm sent us 38 pairs of documents, all of which crashed when the firm tried to run document comparison software. After processing with CrossFingers, 37 of the 38 pairs of documents worked properly.

Our customers report that CrossFingers really does work “most of the time”. If you have a corrupt document, download a copy of CrossFingers and try it yourself.

If you are experiencing corrupt documents on a regular basis, we suggest that you look at the PreProcessor option in our Stylizer product. Regular use of the Stylizer PreProcessor on problem documents, such as those sent into your organization by email, or other means, will prevent most document corruption problems from ever happening.