Word 2000 not opening Word 97 documents

[Mike O'sullivan]

A few months ago I converted to Word 2000 from 97. Most documents open ok,
but there have, worryingly, been two or three that will not open. They seem
to be corrupted. When I open one, instead of a letter, for example, all I
get is what looks like several pages of code.

Is there anything I can do to retrieve these documents, or are they
corrupted irretrievably?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What you describe *might* be the results of opening a document using the
Recover Text from Any File setting in File Open. If so, and if you don't
have this setting set, then possibly the documents were opened this way and
saved in text format. Another possibility is that Word is choosing that
setting because there is some corruption in the document that causes Word
not to recognize it as a Word file type. See
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/RecoverText.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Mike,

In Word go to Tools/Options/General and turn on "Confirm conversions
at Open". Open one of the documents and see if selecting the correct
converter rectifies the problem.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Mike O'sullivan]

What you describe *might* be the results of opening a document using the
Recover Text from Any File setting in File Open. If so, and if you don't
have this setting set, then possibly the documents were opened this way and
saved in text format. Another possibility is that Word is choosing that
setting because there is some corruption in the document that causes Word
not to recognize it as a Word file type. See
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/RecoverText.htm

Thanks for the reply. If you mean the "all files" setting in the "Files of
Type" box, yes it was set that way, but changing it to "all word documents"
doesn't make any difference, still garbage. I might have saved it in its'
corrupted form while playing around with it. never mind, it wasn't an
important document and I now can't find any others similarly affected.

 

[Mike O'sullivan]

Hi Mike,

In Word go to Tools/Options/General and turn on "Confirm conversions
at Open". Open one of the documents and see if selecting the correct
converter rectifies the problem.

Thanks, I did this, but when I then open a document Word doesn't ask me
which converter, just opens the document (still corrupted).

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

No, I was not referring to All Files. There is a specific setting for
Recover Text from Any File that opens a Word document as a text file. As
explained in the referenced article, it can become turned on when you open a
file Word does not know what converter to use for, and in Word versions 97
and 2000 it is "sticky" even between Word sessions, so any files you open
subsequently will be opened using this setting until you change the setting
back to All Word Documents or some other. If you save a document when you
have it open as text, all formatting will be lost, and the extraneous
document information will be included; you do get a warning when you try to
save.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Mike O'sullivan]

OK, found it now. I don't know if "files of type" ever was set thus, but
it isn't now and the file still doesn't open. Reckon I must have saved it
somehow in a garbled form. Never mind, more careful in future.

Thanks.