Problem Opening Word document

[Derek]

I have spent many hours over two days on a Word document. Now when I try to
open it, I get an error message telling me that Word cannot open it. It
claims it cannot open it “because of problems with the contentsâ€. Under
details, it tells me it is an “unspecified error†and gives me a line and
column number.
I have tried searching under help but get nothing useful.
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

 

[Jay Freedman]

I have spent many hours over two days on a Word document. Now when I try to
open it, I get an error message telling me that Word cannot open it. It
claims it cannot open it “because of problems with the contents”. Under
details, it tells me it is an “unspecified error” and gives me a line and
column number.
I have tried searching under help but get nothing useful.
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

In the Open dialog, select the document. Then click the down arrow
next to the Open button and choose Open and Repair from the dropdown.

If that doesn't help, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm.

 

[Terry Farrell]

If you are working to removable media, copy the file to your HDD and always
work from your local HDD.

 

[Main Township Police Department]

The error shows up when trying to open documents just created and saved on
HDD, we don't use removable media normally.

Further, the fixes specified in
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm.
seem to only apply to documents that are opened or openable. None of our
documents can be opened. The error line states the problem exists on line 2,
column 17445 for ALL documents having a problem.

 

[Terry Farrell]

The fact that you have an identical error on several documents suggests that
it must be something in common - company logo in Header or Footer of
something along those lines.

DOCX files are actually several files zipped up. If you rename the file.docx
to file.zip, you can then open them with WinZip (or other unzipper) and see
the individual files. You can then open the xml file directly, go to line 2
column 17445 and fix the problem. Sadly, I know nothing about xml structure
so am not able to help identify the problem. Microsoft support should be
able to assist though.

Terry

"Main Township Police Department" <Main Township Police
(e-mail address removed)> wrote in message

 

[Derek]

In the Open dialog, select the document. Then click the down arrow
next to the Open button and choose Open and Repair from the dropdown.

If that doesn't help, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit.
.

Thanks but open and repair does not work. I can open the document if I
first convert it into any of the formats on this website:
http://apps.phplivedocx.org/convert/docx-to-pdf. E.g. I can convert it to
rtf. Doc, pdf and then open it. I can also open it with Open Office I can
even convert it back into Word 2007 an open it. However, I had about 40 or
50 equations in the original document. A few I had copied and pasted from
earlier Word 2003 documents are OK. However, everyone I created with the
equation editor in Word 2007 is lost (or in the case of Open Office messed
up) when I convert.
If no one only has any ideas of how I get this document to open directly in
Word 2007, does anyone know of a format I can convert it to that would keep
the equations created with the equation editor in Word 2007.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Thanks but open and repair does not work. I can open the document if
I first convert it into any of the formats on this website:
http://apps.phplivedocx.org/convert/docx-to-pdf. E.g. I can convert
it to rtf. Doc, pdf and then open it. I can also open it with Open
Office I can even convert it back into Word 2007 an open it.
However, I had about 40 or 50 equations in the original document. A
few I had copied and pasted from earlier Word 2003 documents are OK.
However, everyone I created with the equation editor in Word 2007 is
lost (or in the case of Open Office messed up) when I convert.
If no one only has any ideas of how I get this document to open
directly in Word 2007, does anyone know of a format I can convert it
to that would keep the equations created with the equation editor in
Word 2007.

Part of the problem may be that there are two different equation editors in
Word 2007. The older one, Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0, has to be
specifically installed (it's in the Office 2007 installer but not selected
by default) and invoked through the Insert > Object button. This is the only
equation editor available in Word 2003.

The new one, which is available only in Word 2007 (and now 2010 beta) and
has no special name, is invoked through the Insert > Equation button or the
Alt+= shortcut.

Which editor was used in Word 2007 to create the equations?

When you save a document containing equations of the new kind, they're
converted to pictures for Word 2003, even if you have the Compatibility
Pack. However, the document should still be able to open in Word 2007, and
(after using Office button > Convert if necessary) the new-style equations
should be editable again. I suppose it's possible for the conversion to
damage the equation data in the file, but I've never seen that.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Derek]

Part of the problem may be that there are two different equation editors in
Word 2007. The older one, Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0, has to be
specifically installed (it's in the Office 2007 installer but not selected
by default) and invoked through the Insert > Object button. This is the only
equation editor available in Word 2003.

The new one, which is available only in Word 2007 (and now 2010 beta) and
has no special name, is invoked through the Insert > Equation button or the
Alt+= shortcut.

Which editor was used in Word 2007 to create the equations?

When you save a document containing equations of the new kind, they're
converted to pictures for Word 2003, even if you have the Compatibility
Pack. However, the document should still be able to open in Word 2007, and
(after using Office button > Convert if necessary) the new-style equations
should be editable again. I suppose it's possible for the conversion to
damage the equation data in the file, but I've never seen that.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Until this document I never knew there was a new equation editor. I only
got Word 2007 a couple of months ago and when I was using equations, I was
generally editing equations either in old Word 2003 documents or copied and
pasted from old Word 2003 documents. When I edited them in Word it seemed to
use the older equation editor (I assume it got “selected†the first time I
used it). However, early on in this document I had to create an equation
from scratch. I used the insert > equation button. When I found out how
easy it was compared the old editor, I stopped copying and pasting equations
done with the old equation editor and just used the new one more or less
exclusively (to my current regret).

The document will not open in either Word 2003 or 2007 (I still had Word
2003 on an old laptop I don’t normally use anymore) but when I used that link
in my previous post to convert it to a doc file, it does open in Word 2007
but with the equations done with the new equation editor gone. I suppose I
could try opening the file converted at the link with the Word 2003 on my old
laptop.

Perhaps it was a bad idea to have equations created by different equation
editors in the same document. If so, I can avoid the mistake in the future.
However, right now, I would really like to savage my work.