broken myplaces.kml file

[ellenjed]

Hello,

I opened google earth pro today, and all of my places (there were
many) have disappered. I tried to recover them, and found my
"myplaces.broken-6-3-2011.kml" file, which is 18.9 MB....says it was
last modified on 03/04/11.

Unfortunately this is a huge amount of work (it actually had years
worth of data, as well as downloaded GPS information that I won't be
able to get back), and many of these files weren't saved elsewhere.
Is there any way to recover the file(s)?

It says "parse error 86164 at column 34: then a bunch of chinese
characters".

Any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated as this is for work
(and is why we have a pro license); I've lost a huge amount of work.
Unfortunately I don't know enough about the inner workings of google
earth pro (or computers) to really know what to do next.

Thanks so much.

[Jason M]

Hi.

Steps to repair myplaces.kml have been posted here:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/earth/thread?tid=3994c32401243da1&hl=en

If have bunch of non-printable characters in the KML file then you
might try commenting out large sections until at least it becomes a
well-formed XML file. See that discussion for details.

<Folder>
<Placemark>
...
</Placemark>

<!--
start of bad character block
...
end of bad character block
-->
etc.
</Folder>

It's tedious but not impossible!