The loop looks like this: you open the deck, PowerPoint says it found a problem and offers to repair, the repair “succeeds”, you save, and the next open asks again. Nothing is being repaired, because PowerPoint is fixing the symptom each time and writing the same broken part back into the file. ...
You open a workbook and get: We found a problem with some content in ‘report.xlsx’. Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can? Click Yes, and Excel “recovers” the file — usually by deleting something. Click No, and nothing opens. Either way you do not learn what was wrong. This message is different from the generic “file is corrupt” dialog. It means the package is structurally valid and one part failed validation. That is a much better situation, and it is diagnosable. ...
If Word crashed, was force-quit, or the machine rebooted with a document open, the text is often still on disk. Word writes copies to three different places, and which one has your content depends on how far the crash was from your last save. Search them in this order. Do it before reopening Word, because opening a new document can overwrite the most useful folder. ...
‘report.xlsx’ is locked for editing by ‘another user’. The message is precise and almost always wrong about who. Excel does not track users — it tracks a lock file sitting next to the workbook. If that file is stale, the lock outlives the person who created it. ...