Compressed docx-file with bzip2, unable to decompress
 

Hi all,

Oops... I just compressed an 18 MB docx-file using bzip2 (directly, so using bzip2 file.docx, instead of using tar). The resulting file is only 100 B, which seemed too good to be true... and is. When I tried to decompress it, I ended up with a 45 B docx-file, containing only one line of total nonsense...

Trying to repair things with bzip2recover did not work, as this targets blocks of data in a bz2-file, and I don't even seem to have one single block in my bz2-file.

Does anyone know if it is possible to recover my original 18 MB docx?

Thanks in advance,
Best,
Sita

P.S. I was using my Mac for this

what was the command you entered. i suspect that a typo may have fubar'd the file unrecoverably ?

I used bzip2 file.docx

does mac have a history command: what does provide ?

maybe the bzip2 command on (bsd) mac does something different than the gnu version (i know the cp command threw me off using free-bsd to copy directories). maybe this should be posted on the *nix subforum so the mac guys would be able to add their opinions.

Hi,

Thanks for your quick replies up to now!
The history command works fine on a Mac; it returns the command I just posted (bzip2 file.docx), together with the decompress command (bzip2 -d file.docx.bz2). You might be right about the bzip2 command acting differently on a Mac OS, I don't know. I'll try to migrate this post to the *nix subforum.

Best,
Sita