Re: Corrupt Word Files
- From: Jim Gordon MVP <goldkey74@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 01:04:25 -0500
Hi,
MacLink Plus can convert Word files back as far as version 4
http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/mlp_xlators.html
-Jim
--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
MVP FAQ
<http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;mvpfaqs>
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote:
Hi Charlotte:.
Naaaahhhh :-) I open Word documents all the time on external drives. The
only one you need to avoid is a floppy drive, and those are not "that"
common on Macs any more :-) Floppy drives have problems running out of
space and dropping "chunks" of files. A Word document won't stand that: you
must either read it all, or you can't read any of it.
External drives on older versions of Mac OS had problems if they were
designed for PCs and forgot that a Mac file is in two parts: the Resource
Fork and the Data Fork. But I've never seen the problem on OS X.
However, those files are NOT corrupt :-) They're in an old Word format that
is no longer available. It's the old text-based Word for DOS format known
as "Word.Document.2". You send 'em to me and I'll have them open in a New
York minute for you.
All converters are programs: fairly large and quite active. They make good
targets for virus writers and are difficult to secure against that.
Microsoft made a decision some years back to drop support for that converter
because it required too much work to maintain it, and nobody used it any
longer.
It shipped with everything up to Mac Word 6 and PC Word 97, if I recall. In
Word 97/98 Microsoft adopted the new Word.Document.8 format, which is what
everything is using now.
Because Microsoft updated their Word 2 converter for Windows 95/Word 97, it
still works on latest version of Windows. Windows XP still runs code
designed for earlier versions of Windows (actually, Windows XP will run code
designed for MS DOS!! There are still idiots out there who believe that
this "proves" that Windows XP is built on DOS. It's not -- it's nothing
like it -- it's a very clever emulation, much like Classic or Rosetta).
However, the old Word 2 converter for Mac OS will NOT run on Mac OS X.
Microsoft found it would cost too much to get the Mac version of that
converter running reliably on OS X, so they dropped it. They've dropped it
on the PC too, but the old version still works there.
That's your only problem: the old converter won't run on the latest Mac OS.
It will run on the latest Windows :-)
I see Microsoft has now put its foot down and withdrawn said converter from
its download site (not surprising: it has a minor security hole in it that
they don't want to spend huge amounts of money rewriting to patch).
However, it's all over the net. I found it here:
http://wadict.soas.ac.uk/download/convpack.exe
If you have a friend with Windows Office 97 or later, download that file and
run it to add the old Word converters to PC Word. They'll work just fine
:-)
Cheers
On 30/3/06 8:17 AM, in article
1143670650.146791.11100@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Charlotte L."
<decaftalllatte5@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John,
Thank you very much for your response - I'm happy to hear the files
aren't permanently damaged. I read in an earlier post that copying
files via a LaCie drive often create this problem. The Word documents
I've had trouble with were transferred from an older computer using a
LaCie drive - is there something I can do to my LaCie drive to prevent
this sort of problem in the future?
Thanks for the help,
CL
- References:
- Corrupt Word Files
- From: Charlotte L.
- Re: Corrupt Word Files
- From: John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
- Re: Corrupt Word Files
- From: Charlotte L.
- Re: Corrupt Word Files
- From: John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
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