Re: Corrupt Word Files

Elliott,
Thank you very much for your response and offer to help. I believe I
have access to Word 5.1 at work. If that doesn't work out, I may take
you up on your offer of opening and resaving the documents after all!
-CL


Elliott Roper wrote:
In article <1143578338.475592.142190@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Charlotte L. <decaftalllatte5@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have a number of old Word files (created as far back as 1989) that
will not open in Word 2004. I get the following message when I try to
do so: "Word cannot open this document. The document might be in use
or might not be a valid word document." I tried the following fixes
with no luck:

1. I tried to open the file from within Word.
2. I tried renaming the documents.
3. I dragged the com.microsoft.word.plist file out of the Preferences
Folder before starting Word.
4. I have Repaired Disk Permissions using Disk Utility.

Finally, I did manage to open some of the files in Word 98 but must
convert each file first and find that I often lose most of the
formatting and graphics.

Are these files permanently damaged or is there some way to recover
them? Any suggestions would be helpful.

That reminded me that some of my older archives are about to die from
obsolescence. Some files from 1989 won't open in Word 2004, but others
a little later will, even though it reports both as Word 1.x-5.x
Document. Mine misbehaves slightly differently, offering to open them
in a "recover text" dialog. The options it offers do not include Word
1-5.
I have kept an ancient Mac 8500 running OS 8.something with Word 5.1 on
it, and an even older version of Excel for just this purpose. It will
read the oldies and save them as Word 5.1 files, which Word 2004 can
read. I think the time has come to crank it up to see if it still
works.

If you are really desperate, and the data is not too confidential, zip
one up and mail it to me off list. If you have a large number of files
to convert, I might want to get paid.

--
To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$
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.

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