Software to recover deleted files from a shared folder in the network, or another option

If you're using Shadow protection on the server you might be in luck that you can restore it using previous versions..
To find out, Right click in the folder which contained the deleted data, then go to properties, Previous versions..
If there's any listed you can simply open the previous version and copy your data back.

If not, then you might need to restore it from your backups. (hopefully you have a backup of that directory).

If Shadow protect isn't enabled, and you have no backups, your only option would be to to remove the server from your lan and boot it using a liveMedia or another separate OS, then scanning the RAID array using tools like Getdataback or Photorec (which is included on the PCRepix LiveDVD), and if the data is there either register the tool (Getdataback) to copy off the data, or directly try copying it off with Photorec:

http://runtime.org
http://pcrepix.sourceforge.net

I used a recover deleted files software from the server side and this software found many of the files deleted, however when I recover the files an try to open them (most of them are Word docs)  Word says there it found unreadable content and it won't let me open these files, do you know of any trick to do this?

 Thanks,

No. Parts of the disks where those files were located have been overwritten with other data, so you have only recovered parts of the files with parts missing. You won't be able to recover any sensible data from them. That why I mentioned above that it is necessary to stop using the server and use another OS to scan the disks. Every minute of using the server will make it less probable that you will be able to recover anything useful.

You might be able to open the files with a hex editor and then extract any remnants of data that looks usable, that would take a lot of work and time,

Anyway, what happened with your backups? That's one of the many reasons you backup your system...

The back up is there, but when I am trying to extract the file I can see all the folders but no files in the folders. I am not sure what why I can only see the folder, but not the files.

Thanks,