Can't read important .doc and .xls

[smugdoug]

I have a few old documents that I believe were created in either Office
2001 or Office X. They started out as business plan templates from a
template set called BizPlan Builder. The Word template was a
straight-forward multi-chaptered business plan that I just changed the
wording on and saved as my own documents. The Excel templates were
workbooks that had several sheets and macros. I just plugged in the
numbers, changed a little of the text, and saved as my own docs. I have
not touched these documents in over a year and a half. In the interim I
have changed computers, had a hard-drive failure, and done backups.

I restored two copies of these documents from two different Retrospect
backup sets AND rescued a copy after restoring my failed hard drive.
They all have the same problem. When I go to open the Word doc, it goes
through the converter (whether I open from within Word or by
double-clicking on the .doc), and after it opens it's just an
incomprehensible combo of symbols. When I go to open the Excel docs,
the same thing happens. I have tried opening all of these in Office
2004, Office X, and Office 2001 to no avail.

Here's another interesting but bizarre anomally. When I tried to send
the word doc to a good-hearted soul (JE McGimpsey) from this newsgroup,
it wouldn't attach - it said there was a failure of type -199! Yet it
is definitely a 116KB MS Word document. When I sent him one of the
Excel docs (1.1MB - the exact same size as the original template which
STILL OPENS FINE), JE said it was soup - a mix of stuff from all
different sources.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!!

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Doug:

I am beginning to wonder whether the hard drive failure in question is still
happening on your current drive.

The file you sent me was also a "binary salad" of data from different files.

I suspect that error (it's an Apple OS error, BTW -- MS Errors are
"positive" numbers) means "The system could not find all of the parts of
that file to attach".

Hope this helps

I have a few old documents that I believe were created in either Office
2001 or Office X. They started out as business plan templates from a
template set called BizPlan Builder. The Word template was a
straight-forward multi-chaptered business plan that I just changed the
wording on and saved as my own documents. The Excel templates were
workbooks that had several sheets and macros. I just plugged in the
numbers, changed a little of the text, and saved as my own docs. I have
not touched these documents in over a year and a half. In the interim I
have changed computers, had a hard-drive failure, and done backups.

I restored two copies of these documents from two different Retrospect
backup sets AND rescued a copy after restoring my failed hard drive.
They all have the same problem. When I go to open the Word doc, it goes
through the converter (whether I open from within Word or by
double-clicking on the .doc), and after it opens it's just an
incomprehensible combo of symbols. When I go to open the Excel docs,
the same thing happens. I have tried opening all of these in Office
2004, Office X, and Office 2001 to no avail.

Here's another interesting but bizarre anomally. When I tried to send
the word doc to a good-hearted soul (JE McGimpsey) from this newsgroup,
it wouldn't attach - it said there was a failure of type -199! Yet it
is definitely a 116KB MS Word document. When I sent him one of the
Excel docs (1.1MB - the exact same size as the original template which
STILL OPENS FINE), JE said it was soup - a mix of stuff from all
different sources.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!!

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410