can't open Word files - corruption of files?

[fotofah]

I'm using Word as part of Office 2004 on my Mac G5, OS 10.3.9 (was
10.3.8 when this first happened a few days ago). The Word version is
v11.1 (under "About Word."

When I try open an existing Word file, created on my Mac, I get a box
saying: "Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close.
We are sorry for the inconvenience" with more, including the chance to
send the incident to Microsoft. I typically send that, for whatever it
will accomplish.

I may also get a warning box: "Word encountered file corruption while
opening test.doc. Part of this document may be recoverable. Attempt
recovery now?" I click yes, but it just loops through the error message
as above.

I *am* able to launch Word. I can't open files. I *can* save files, but
not open them again.

The below behavior happens if I'm in my normal user account (as admin)
on my office Mac. When I opened a "test" user account, Word seemed to
work fine. I suspect that somewhere there is a file, perhaps invisible,
under my account, that is corrupt and I can't find it to dump it. An
Applecare tech rep suggested it could be corruption in a cache file or
preference in my Library folder for Word. I think I found 2 .plist
files and Trashed them, but that didn't solve the problem. I couldn't
find any cache files named Word.

I've run (off a separate hard drive) Apple Disk First Aid, Diskwarrior
(latest version) and Tech Tool Pro (latest version.) They didn't solve
the problem either. :-(

I also tried doing a custom reinstall of just Word off my Office 2004
CD.

Because I'm working on a university that had a contract with MS which
gives us low prices on software, but without my having access to MS
tech support on the phone, I'm in a fix, trying to get help (quickly!)
on this problem through avenues like this group.

I tried to post this message last Friday, but today found no evidence
of that 2 days later, so sorry if this is a 2nd posting.

- Dennis, photo (at) uofn.edu

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

I also tried doing a custom reinstall of just Word off my Office 2004
CD.

That does no good. First remove the Normal template in ~/Documents/Microsoft
User Data/ and relaunch Word. Make a new document and try to open it. Does
that work? For existing documents stricken with the problem, try
File/Open/Recover Text from Any File. If that works, you'll have to reformat
and save as Word Document but at least you'll get the substance back. If
there's a problem with the new saved file, try again but this time select
and copy all but the final paragraph mark (click the ¶ button first to
display those) and paste into a new Document and save. When finished with
these documents, File/Open again and change the popup to "All Readable
Documents".


If that doesn't work for new documents, use the Office Remover app in
Additional Tools folder of the Microsoft Office folder, and remove Office
2004. It won't touch your data files. Empty the trash, Reinstall Office
2004. You should be fine now for new documents (test it). For existing
documents, use the technique above.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I tried to post this message last Friday, but today found no evidence

of that 2 days later, so sorry if this is a 2nd posting.

Just by the way--you did post it, but in the word-dedicated group instead of
the general office group.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office

 

[fotofah]

Thanks, Daiya. I'm subscribed now to both groups, but hadn't meant to
cross-post.

I've tried removing the Normal template. Didn't solve the problem. When
I created a new Word file and saved it to the Desktop, I immediately
got the same error messages as before. :-(

Then I did choice #3 after option-launch of Entourage and rebuilt the
database for it successfully (which had been suggested to me in the
other Group, since evidently Word and Entourage can cause problems with
each other). That also didn't solve the problem. So I guess I follow
Paul's advice next and remove Office 2004 and reinstall?

- Dennis

 

[fotofah]

I just finished the Remove and then reinstalled Office 2004. That seems
to have solved the problem, at least for creating new Word files and
being able to open them without an error message.

So far, I'm able to open any Word file, including those which always
gave error messages during the past week.

- Dennis

 

[Jeff]

I'm curious to know if anybody thinks that doing a reinstall of Office
2004 would work for me as well (see my separate posts on problems with
Word and Entourage), since I am now using Word without any difficulty
but still haven't been able to open Entourage. I am really
uncomfortable with the idea of "Remove" and reinstall -- is it true
that doing this will NOT affect my existing data, including all my
saved Word files and all the contact/project/calendar info I had in
Entourage (not that I can access that now anyway)?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I answered on your original thread instead.