Word X suddenly won't open a document it just saved and closed without incident

[Melanie]

I have several documents, about 40% of all my active files, that
suddenly become unopenable. No errors are incurred while working on
the file or saving it. But when I try to open it again, in the same
program, same machine, all same settings, sometimes immediately and
sometimes days later, the file cannot be opened by word or anything
else. This leaves me with only my hard copy or a pdf if I made one
before closing the file. Any ideas?

It is always a document that was sent to me that I opened and did a
lot of formatting to, although not all the files I receive from the
same creators develop this problem. It is usually an rtf. I have
Version 10.1.4 on a G4 with OSX 10.3.3

Thank you!

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

There are three ways to open a doc. Double-click. Right-click and use Open
With. File | Open from within the program.

Sometimes one will work when another won't so try them all.

The docs randomly stop opening--do they ever randomly become openable again?

See this page on Document Corruption to see if you are using any of the
known causes of corruption.
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/DocumentCorruption.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

DM