Fix 'The file cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents'

"When I try to open a Docx file, Microsoft Word 2013 doesn't allow me to access the file and flashes an error message saying 'The file [.docx] cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents.' Clicking on the details, it displays an 'unspecified error'. Is there a way to recover the word document or its contents?" 

How to fix 'The file cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents' error 

'The file cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents' error message which pops up and prevents users to access their office documents like .docx or .xml files. When you get the error message, you can infer that your file might be corrupted. Then how can you open, repair or recover the Word document? In this page, we have created three solutions including a third-party Word file recovery software to help!

Fix#1. Use Open and Repair feature to open the Word document 

1. Start Word.
2. On the File menu or the Microsoft Office button, click Open.
3. In the Open dialog box, click to select the blank Word file.
4. Click the down arrow on the Open button, and then click Open and Repair.

This Microsoft Word built-in feature will then fix the problems or corruptions that detected on the documents.

Fix#2. Use Google Doc to open the Word document 

1) Send the corrupted Word file to your Gmail account. 
2) Click the attachment to open it in the Google Docs previewer.
3) Click 'Open With Google Docs'. The document should open and be viewable.
4) Click File -> Download As -> Microsoft Word (.docx)
5) Use Microsoft Word to open the document you just downloaded.

Fix#3. Use Word recovery software to retrieve the .docx document 

Except for the two methods above, there is also some third-party Word file recovery software that can help! Here EaseUS disk data recovery, a try-before-buy tool can help.

Step 1. Launch EaseUS disk data recovery, select the drive that used to save the Word document and click "Scan" button.

Step 2. A quick scan will start first to search the lost data. After it completed, a deep scan will automatically launch in order to find more files.

Step 3. Preview all the listed recoverable Word files, choose those you want. Finally, click "Recover" button to retrieve them back. Here, you'd better save all the recovered files on a different drive or device in case of a data recovery failure.