Problem opening MS Word file

H

hsetima

New Member
I have a problem opening a MS Word file. Is was earlier saved as type '97 - 2003 word document'.
When I open it now, in a pop-up window it says:

File Conversion - 'filename'
Select the encoding that makes your document readable.
Text encoding:
Windows Default MS Dos Other encoding
Preview:
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
(the ÿ continues)


When I open the file using Windows Default, it shows only ÿ's as above.

Is there any way that I can open it?
 
Last edited:
N

Nanobyte

New Member
I have an old version of Word so I can't help directly. Did you check the language and font of the document when it opened with the ÿ? Have you tried opening the document with the other file type options? In my Word version there is also a file type to extract text from any document.

If you open a Word document in Notepad, the header has a lot of ÿ. That is followed by text and various encoding. The document summary in the footer may include the type of text document. If the header is being seen as text then the document may be corrupt. As a last resort you can extract the text from Notepad (with some editing).

As a footnote, I was quite alarmed at the content of some of my documents when viewed in Notepad. Where I had used a document as a template, modified and saved with another name, the filename of the original document was in the second document. Not exactly confidential.
 
H

hsetima

New Member
I opened the document with note pad and all i coul dsee throughout was the same ÿ! I believe the file is corrupt but was wondering how to extract text from notepad with some editing.
 
N

Nanobyte

New Member
hsetima said:
I opened the document with note pad and all i coul dsee throughout was the same ÿ! I believe the file is corrupt but was wondering how to extract text from notepad with some editing.
Click to expand...

In Notepad, I opened documents I had written and those received from others, presumed to have more up-to-date version of Word. All have similar file headers and footers. If you only see "ÿ" characters it looks like your file has no message text in it.

The text is scattered among lots of gobbledygook characters but it should be fairly obvious what is message text. To extract, all you do is delete the garbage in between the coherent text. Then save as .txt file or paste into Word. Obviously unformatted and may be missing some information but better than nothing.

Try opening another .doc file (that opens OK in Word) in Notepad so that you can see how the message text appears among the formatting information.
 
J

Jekis46

New Member
Microsoft Word is complicated program which has many hidden facilities, but sometimes there are problems after using it. Recently I found a suitable program to solve possible problems. wordrepair.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top