Corrupted Word docs

[CraigT]

I run Office 2003. Following a recent update I found that all my old word
docs had been corrupted and could in part only be viewed in notebook. Any
fixes as it amounts to hundreds of docs. My operating system is Vista.

 

[Terry Farrell]

I presume you mean Notepad rather than Notebook.

What updates are we talking about: updating Office 2003 would not corrupt
documents as Office updates don't touch user files. Where are these
documents stored: on the local HDD or elsewhere?

Are you able to open the documents using Word's Open and Repair function?
Will they open in WordPad? What errors do you get when trying to open them
in Word?