Opened doc in notepad-how change back?

H

Harlan Grove

Granny wrote...
I opened a doc in notepad. It is in "code" for lack of better word. How do I
change it back? I now open a doc and unable to read.
Click to expand...

If you opened a Word .DOC file in Notepad *and* saved it from Notepad,
you almost certainly corrupted it. It's very unlikely you can recover
it. If there's any plain text in it, it'd be closer to the end of the
file than the beginning, so open it again in Notepad, scroll to the end
and then scroll slowly towards the beginning looking for where any
plain text starts. Select the plain text, copy it to the clipboard,
then paste into a new Word document in Word.
 
E

Echo S

Granny said:
I opened a doc in notepad. It is in "code" for lack of better word. How do I
change it back? I now open a doc and unable to read.
[email protected]
Click to expand...

I don't know if this will work for you or not, but it won't hurt to try.

Open Word and use File/Open to get to the dialog box. At the bottom in the
"files of type" area, choose "recover text from any file" and navigate to
your document. You may be able to get most of it back that way.

When you're finished, you'll want to go to File/Open and change the "file of
type" back to "all Word documents."
 
H

Herb Tyson [MVP]

Do you have backups turned on in Word? If so, before you do anything
else--such as opening/saving the corrupted file from Word--use Windows
Explorer to see if you have a corresponding file named Backup of ___.WBK. If
so, then that backup is probably your only hope of getting the original file
back. Open the Backup file using Word, then save it to a .DOC file.
 
H

Harlan Grove

widman said:
find the file in explorer, right click and "open with" Word.
Click to expand...

Reread the OP: "I now open a doc and unable to read."

Since Notepad will open anything (more's the pity), this can't be an error
message from Notepad. While the OP wasn't explicit, I'd bet the OP means
that Word can't open the file. If so, how would your advice be useful?
 
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