I have successflly recovered a word file. Recuvva showed its status as EXCELLENT with no overwritten clusters. however when trying to open it it from word it will not open. have tried open and repair and opening as a text file from withing word.
Excellent means that the data clusters are not currently overwritten by another file, but they may have been at some previous time. Recuva will recover the clusters whatever the contents. In Advanced mode look at the file header. For a .doc file the first four bytes should be D0 CF 11 E0 and for a .docx file 50 4B 03 04. If these signatures are not present than the data is corrupt and unfortunately lost.