We're sorry. We can't open [file] because we found a problem with its contents. Details: Unspecified error — Location: Part: /word/document.xml, Line: 0, Column: 0 (also Line: 2)

What's actually wrong

A .docx is really a ZIP archive of XML files, and this error means Word's parser choked on invalid XML inside the main body part (document.xml). "Line: 2" usually points to one specific broken element — corrupted Table of Contents field codes, hyperlinks, or equations are the classic culprits — while "Line: 0, Column: 0" often means the part is truncated or the ZIP entry is unreadable. It's also a signature error for files generated by software libraries (python-docx, PHPWord, report exporters). Your text is almost always still inside the file; the question is how much of the structure around it survives.

Free fixes — try these first

1. Open and Repair: File → Open → Browse → select the file → click the arrow beside Open → Open and Repair. Word can rebuild minor XML damage itself.
2. Open in LibreOffice Writer: its parser is far more forgiving than Word's. If it opens, immediately Save As a new .docx — the rewrite produces clean XML that Word accepts.
3. Round-trip through Google Docs: upload the file to Google Drive, open with Google Docs, then File → Download → Microsoft Word (.docx).
4. Manual XML surgery (free, technical): copy the file, rename the copy from .docx to .zip, extract it, and open word/document.xml in Notepad++ with the XML Tools plugin (Plugins → XML Tools → Pretty print). Go to the line/column from the error, fix or delete the broken element — deleting a corrupt TOC field block is the most common fix — then zip the folder contents back up and rename to .docx.
5. Last resort — text only: File → Open → in the file-type dropdown choose Recover Text from Any File (*.*). You'll get your words back but lose all formatting, images and tables.

If the free fixes fail

When the error says Line 0, Column 0 (no location to hand-edit), or the XML is one multi-megabyte line where a manual fix is likely to make things worse, our analyzer parses every part of the archive, repairs the malformed elements automatically, and shows exactly what percent of the document it recovered before you decide anything.