.docx files

[jsafdie]

Folks,

I'm unable to open .docx files sent to me by students even after I've
downloaded the new Beta patch, the XML converter, which purports to
save .docx files in a .rtf format.

I'm running the Office:Mac 2004 Student and Teacher Edition, and the
problem is that when I click on the .docx file, it doesn't download to
my desktop AS a file -- instead, it downloads as some sort of zip
folder. And when I open that folder, I get a few more folders with a
lot of .xml files in them -- the Converter I downloaded doesn't know
what to do with ay of them.

I'd greatly appreciate any hints anyone has about this -- I could just
get my students to save everything they send as regular .doc files,
but if they have the new Office, they should be able to use it.

Thanks,

Joe

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I'm running the Office:Mac 2004 Student and Teacher Edition, and the
problem is that when I click on the .docx file, it doesn't download to
my desktop AS a file -- instead, it downloads as some sort of zip
folder. And when I open that folder, I get a few more folders with a
lot of .xml files in them -- the Converter I downloaded doesn't know
what to do with ay of them.

What happens when, rather than clicking on the .docx files, you instead
drag the .docx file onto the Office Converter's application window?

 

[jsafdie]

What happens when, rather than clicking on the .docx files, you instead

drag the .docx file onto the Office Converter's application window?

--- Thanks for the interest, but I guess I'm not sure what you're
talking about. The file in question exists only as a link -- the one
I'm trying now, for example, is "racism in the twentieth century.docx"

I can't drag the link anywhere. And when I click on that link, as I
said, an entire folder appears on my desktop. I can't drag the folder
onto the Office Converter's appllication window . . . it disappears.
If I click on the folder, I get three more folders, including one
called "word" . . . which seems promising . . . but when I click on
THAT folder, I just get a lot of .xml files -- and when I try to drag
ANY of them onto the Office Converter's application window, it too
disappears.

Very frustrating!

 

[JE McGimpsey]

What happens when, rather than clicking on the .docx files, you instead
drag the .docx file onto the Office Converter's application window?

--- Thanks for the interest, but I guess I'm not sure what you're
talking about. The file in question exists only as a link -- the one
I'm trying now, for example, is "racism in the twentieth century.docx"

I can't drag the link anywhere. And when I click on that link, as I
said, an entire folder appears on my desktop. I can't drag the folder
onto the Office Converter's appllication window . . . it disappears.
If I click on the folder, I get three more folders, including one
called "word" . . . which seems promising . . . but when I click on
THAT folder, I just get a lot of .xml files -- and when I try to drag
ANY of them onto the Office Converter's application window, it too
disappears.[/QUOTE]

Download the .docx file to your hard drive as a .docx file (the method
varies depending on what browser you're using, but in Safari, you can
ctrl-click the link and choose Download Linked File), then drag the file
onto the converter's application window.

 

[jsafdie]

JE -- again, many thanks, but . .

In Safari, when I "control - click" on the link, it does give me the
choice you mentioned, but the link downloads to my desktop as either
a .docx file OR a regular zip file (that is, a .docx.zip file) -- in
either case, when I try to drag that file onto EITHER the "Convert One
File" OR the "Convert Many Files" dialog box of the converter . . .
the file disappears, and nothing happens.

I mean, I appreciate that it's a Beta patch, but I wonder if anyone
has been able to deal with .docx files with this Office:Mac
program . . .

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I mean, I appreciate that it's a Beta patch, but I wonder if anyone
has been able to deal with .docx files with this Office:Mac
program . . .

Well, first, it's not a patch, it's a stand-alone application. But in
the last few days, I've used the technique I described on over 100 .docx
documents and it worked fine.

 

[John McGhie]

OK, your problem is that Safari is set up to "Open" Zip files for you.

A .docx file IS a .zip file, it simply has a different extension. That
extension should signal the unzipping applications on your computer to leave
it alone.

But internally, it is a .zip file. You need to cancel the association with
the .docx extension from whichever decompressing application is getting hold
of the file first, so that it does not break it apart.

You need to prevent your browser from doing that: otherwise the converter
doesn't know what you're handing it. It expects a single .docx file. So
first you need to download those links to your hard drive. The converter
can't handle them until they have been stored on your local disk as a single
file.

A .docx is a Zipped folder of files. The Converter must see the whole thing
as a single file (because the first thing it's going to do is uncompress it
into a folder structure). Just double-click the file, or drag it to the
converter window, and it will work. Tell your computer "Stop trying to
"Help", you're getting in the way!" And be patient: a long document
will take a while to convert, depending on the speed of your computer: the
converter is a large application (basically, it's the "engine" out of Word
2008) and it's working very hard. If you're low on processor speed, free
RAM, or hard disk space, expect to wait a while

Yes, the converter works fine for me. The resulting .rtf is readable in
both TextEdit and Word. And yes, corrupted files that crash Word 2007 also
crash the converter

Cheers

JE -- again, many thanks, but . .

In Safari, when I "control - click" on the link, it does give me the
choice you mentioned, but the link downloads to my desktop as either
a .docx file OR a regular zip file (that is, a .docx.zip file) -- in
either case, when I try to drag that file onto EITHER the "Convert One
File" OR the "Convert Many Files" dialog box of the converter . . .
the file disappears, and nothing happens.

I mean, I appreciate that it's a Beta patch, but I wonder if anyone
has been able to deal with .docx files with this Office:Mac
program . . .

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Phillip Jones]

save the original items not to Desktop (which technically a temporary
file /folder. actually have the download go to a directory or folder
and not to desktop and try again see what happens

--- Thanks for the interest, but I guess I'm not sure what you're
talking about. The file in question exists only as a link -- the one
I'm trying now, for example, is "racism in the twentieth century.docx"

I can't drag the link anywhere. And when I click on that link, as I
said, an entire folder appears on my desktop. I can't drag the folder
onto the Office Converter's appllication window . . . it disappears.
If I click on the folder, I get three more folders, including one
called "word" . . . which seems promising . . . but when I click on
THAT folder, I just get a lot of .xml files -- and when I try to drag
ANY of them onto the Office Converter's application window, it too
disappears.

Very frustrating!

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Phillip Jones]

Mac OSX can zip and unzip files from within the system itself whether
you have program or not.

to try remove anything such as Stuffit or Stuffit Deluxe or Stuffit
Expander the go to Finder in File menu you will see create archive
That's in zip format.

Having to turn off zip format in archiving will present a problem as on
Mac OSX there are four major ways of sending archive or compressed files.

..dmg (disk image), .zip, sit/sitx, .pkg (Package) if you have turn off
..zip then that means every item sent zip will have opened manually.

That's also going to be a complication with internet files sent as .xpi
which also is zip files that are simply renamed .zip files :-/

OK, your problem is that Safari is set up to "Open" Zip files for you.

A .docx file IS a .zip file, it simply has a different extension. That
extension should signal the unzipping applications on your computer to leave
it alone.

But internally, it is a .zip file. You need to cancel the association with
the .docx extension from whichever decompressing application is getting hold
of the file first, so that it does not break it apart.

You need to prevent your browser from doing that: otherwise the converter
doesn't know what you're handing it. It expects a single .docx file. So
first you need to download those links to your hard drive. The converter
can't handle them until they have been stored on your local disk as a single
file.

A .docx is a Zipped folder of files. The Converter must see the whole thing
as a single file (because the first thing it's going to do is uncompress it
into a folder structure). Just double-click the file, or drag it to the
converter window, and it will work. Tell your computer "Stop trying to
"Help", you're getting in the way!" And be patient: a long document
will take a while to convert, depending on the speed of your computer: the
converter is a large application (basically, it's the "engine" out of Word
2008) and it's working very hard. If you're low on processor speed, free
RAM, or hard disk space, expect to wait a while

Yes, the converter works fine for me. The resulting .rtf is readable in
both TextEdit and Word. And yes, corrupted files that crash Word 2007 also
crash the converter

Cheers

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Phillip:

What you say is quite correct. However, I don't see that it is going to be
a problem, because Mac OS does not have an association for .docx (or any of
the other XML file formats).

What has happened to the original poster is that at some time he has tried
to download a .docx and Safari has come back saying "I don't know what to do
with this -- choose a program to open it."

It has (correctly) identified the content of the outer wrapper as being a
..zip file and has associated .docx with the BOM Archive Utility, and the OP
has allowed that.

He now needs to go back and reset his OS X preferences, or de-select the
"Open 'safe' files after downloading" preference in Safari.

Inside the .docx file there is actually a little website with a folder
structure. That folder structure MUST remain intact or the file can't be
recognized as a .docx.

However, advanced users of Word will soon learn to re-name a .docx as a
..zip. If you do that, you can then decompress it and use TextEdit to
manually change bits of the file. It's very powerful (provided you can read
and write XML!)

Cheers

Mac OSX can zip and unzip files from within the system itself whether
you have program or not.

to try remove anything such as Stuffit or Stuffit Deluxe or Stuffit
Expander the go to Finder in File menu you will see create archive
That's in zip format.

Having to turn off zip format in archiving will present a problem as on
Mac OSX there are four major ways of sending archive or compressed files.

.dmg (disk image), .zip, sit/sitx, .pkg (Package) if you have turn off

.zip then that means every item sent zip will have opened manually.


That's also going to be a complication with internet files sent as .xpi
which also is zip files that are simply renamed .zip files :-/

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[jsafdie]

John and Philip --

Thanks very much for your attention to this problem. I'm the original
poster, and right after I send this I'm going to my Safari preferences
and uncheck the box that says "Open 'Safe' Files after Downloading" --
then I'll try it again and hope it works.

Your comment about getting rid of programs that decompress files was
interesting to me, because I've also recently tried to get the Major
League Baseball.com site to show me baseball games -- first, I had to
download a version of the Windows Media Player made for Mac (version
9, I believe), but that alone wasn't enough; I first tried Stuffit,
and THAT didn't work -- (I'll go back to the Applications folder and
make sure I deleted it) -- and then I tried a site called "Flip4Mac"
-- which is still on my hard drive and apparently is the only way I
can see live feeds of baseball games. Is that also a "decompressor"
program, as seems likely, and would I have to delete that for this
solution to work?

If not, I'll have to decide between my students' papers and following
the San Francisco Giants . . . truly a dilemma!

Thanks for all your attention to this!

Joe Safdie

Hi Phillip:

What you say is quite correct. However, I don't see that it is going to be
a problem, because Mac OS does not have an association for .docx (or any of
the other XML file formats).

What has happened to the original poster is that at some time he has tried
to download a .docx and Safari has come back saying "I don't know what todo
with this -- choose a program to open it."

It has (correctly) identified the content of the outer wrapper as being a
.zip file and has associated .docx with the BOM Archive Utility, and the OP
has allowed that.

He now needs to go back and reset his OS X preferences, or de-select the
"Open 'safe' files after downloading" preference in Safari.

Inside the .docx file there is actually a little website with a folder
structure. That folder structure MUST remain intact or the file can't be
recognized as a .docx.

However, advanced users of Word will soon learn to re-name a .docx as a
.zip. If you do that, you can then decompress it and use TextEdit to
manually change bits of the file. It's very powerful (provided you can read
and write XML!)

Cheers

Mac OSX can zip and unzip files from within the system itself whether
you have program or not.

to try remove anything such as Stuffit or Stuffit Deluxe or Stuffit
Expander the go to Finder in File menu you will see create archive
That's in zip format.

Having to turn off zip format in archiving will present a problem as on
Mac OSX there are four major ways of sending archive or compressed files.

.dmg (disk image), .zip, sit/sitx, .pkg (Package) if you have turn off

.zip then that means every item sent zip will have opened manually.

That's also going to be a complication with internet files sent as .xpi
which also is zip files that are simply renamed .zip files :-/

 

[jsafdie]

Well, John, it still doesn't work. That is, I deselected the check box
about opening safe files on my Safari preferences, then went to the
file, clicked on the link (which immediately appeared on my desktop by
the way -- don't understand how I can get it to save to the hard drive
or some other place).

It at first said it was a zip file -- double-clicking on it also
generated a .docx file on my desktop -- but the important thing is
that neither one wants to slide over to the converter. When I drag
them over they just disappear.

As I said in my last note a few minutes ago . . . do I need to delete
the "Flip4Mac" program? Is that interfering with things?

Thanks for whatever you can tell me . . .

Joe

Hi Phillip:

What you say is quite correct. However, I don't see that it is going to be
a problem, because Mac OS does not have an association for .docx (or any of
the other XML file formats).

What has happened to the original poster is that at some time he has tried
to download a .docx and Safari has come back saying "I don't know what todo
with this -- choose a program to open it."

It has (correctly) identified the content of the outer wrapper as being a
.zip file and has associated .docx with the BOM Archive Utility, and the OP
has allowed that.

He now needs to go back and reset his OS X preferences, or de-select the
"Open 'safe' files after downloading" preference in Safari.

Inside the .docx file there is actually a little website with a folder
structure. That folder structure MUST remain intact or the file can't be
recognized as a .docx.

However, advanced users of Word will soon learn to re-name a .docx as a
.zip. If you do that, you can then decompress it and use TextEdit to
manually change bits of the file. It's very powerful (provided you can read
and write XML!)

Cheers

Mac OSX can zip and unzip files from within the system itself whether
you have program or not.

to try remove anything such as Stuffit or Stuffit Deluxe or Stuffit
Expander the go to Finder in File menu you will see create archive
That's in zip format.

Having to turn off zip format in archiving will present a problem as on
Mac OSX there are four major ways of sending archive or compressed files.

.dmg (disk image), .zip, sit/sitx, .pkg (Package) if you have turn off

.zip then that means every item sent zip will have opened manually.

That's also going to be a complication with internet files sent as .xpi
which also is zip files that are simply renamed .zip files :-/

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Joe:

No, Flip4Mac is essential for watching WMV content on the Mac, you leave
that right where it is

When you drag the .docx file to the converter, it "should" just disappear.
You should find a "Same Name.rtf" file in the same location.

I wouldn't do this on your desktop: save your download to a folder you
create for the purpose. Then double-click it. If it gives you a .docx,
double-click that. Wait a moment and an .rtf file should appear. Word 2004
will open that

If you still can't get it to work, email the download to me and I will take
a look. I am beginning to wonder if the original creator has "zipped" the
..docx? I guess they're feeling their way around the new formats too
There's no point in Zipping a .docx because it already is zipped

Cheers

Well, John, it still doesn't work. That is, I deselected the check box
about opening safe files on my Safari preferences, then went to the
file, clicked on the link (which immediately appeared on my desktop by
the way -- don't understand how I can get it to save to the hard drive
or some other place).

It at first said it was a zip file -- double-clicking on it also
generated a .docx file on my desktop -- but the important thing is
that neither one wants to slide over to the converter. When I drag
them over they just disappear.

As I said in my last note a few minutes ago . . . do I need to delete
the "Flip4Mac" program? Is that interfering with things?

Thanks for whatever you can tell me . . .

Joe

Hi Phillip:

What you say is quite correct. However, I don't see that it is going to be
a problem, because Mac OS does not have an association for .docx (or any of
the other XML file formats).

What has happened to the original poster is that at some time he has tried
to download a .docx and Safari has come back saying "I don't know what to do
with this -- choose a program to open it."

It has (correctly) identified the content of the outer wrapper as being a
.zip file and has associated .docx with the BOM Archive Utility, and the OP
has allowed that.

He now needs to go back and reset his OS X preferences, or de-select the
"Open 'safe' files after downloading" preference in Safari.

Inside the .docx file there is actually a little website with a folder
structure. That folder structure MUST remain intact or the file can't be
recognized as a .docx.

However, advanced users of Word will soon learn to re-name a .docx as a
.zip. If you do that, you can then decompress it and use TextEdit to
manually change bits of the file. It's very powerful (provided you can read
and write XML!)

Cheers

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Phillip Jones]

That's they problem most users don't know XML from a Martian. ;-)

Even as long as I've been on the internet (Mac SE/30) I know what XML
means Extensible Markup Language. But I don't know what that means. If I
didn't have MacroMedia DreamWeaver I'd be lost trying to keep up my
Associations website.

And at 58 I am too old to go back to school to learn and don't have the
concentration to read a book on it and learn. to me CSS XML, XHTML, PHP,
Javascript, Java and so on are foreign entities.

Hi Phillip:

What you say is quite correct. However, I don't see that it is going to be
a problem, because Mac OS does not have an association for .docx (or any of
the other XML file formats).

What has happened to the original poster is that at some time he has tried
to download a .docx and Safari has come back saying "I don't know what to do
with this -- choose a program to open it."

It has (correctly) identified the content of the outer wrapper as being a
.zip file and has associated .docx with the BOM Archive Utility, and the OP
has allowed that.

He now needs to go back and reset his OS X preferences, or de-select the
"Open 'safe' files after downloading" preference in Safari.

Inside the .docx file there is actually a little website with a folder
structure. That folder structure MUST remain intact or the file can't be
recognized as a .docx.

However, advanced users of Word will soon learn to re-name a .docx as a
.zip. If you do that, you can then decompress it and use TextEdit to
manually change bits of the file. It's very powerful (provided you can read
and write XML!)

Cheers

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Phillip Jones]

Within Safari Preferences > General > (look for) save Downloaded files
to : click on button beside and choose a desired folder to download to.
Then quit preferences to save. now when a file is saved it will be saved
in the folder you chose.

Well, John, it still doesn't work. That is, I deselected the check box
about opening safe files on my Safari preferences, then went to the
file, clicked on the link (which immediately appeared on my desktop by
the way -- don't understand how I can get it to save to the hard drive
or some other place).

It at first said it was a zip file -- double-clicking on it also
generated a .docx file on my desktop -- but the important thing is
that neither one wants to slide over to the converter. When I drag
them over they just disappear.

As I said in my last note a few minutes ago . . . do I need to delete
the "Flip4Mac" program? Is that interfering with things?

Thanks for whatever you can tell me . . .

Joe

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Wild guess to deal with the downloading issue--is this Blackboard or
somesuch? It has an option where it packages all submitted files into a
folder, which it then zips and lets you download, rather than clicking
on the links one-by-one. I would assume that any Course Management
Software has a similar option. If you can get it to do that, then Safari
won't have to deal with the docx at all, and bypassing might get you a
docx file you can use with the converter.

If this is relevant, it will probably only make sense to Jsafdie. If it
makes no sense to you, please ignore it.

Daiya

PS. *how* did you get your students to spell out "twentieth century"
instead of writing "20th century"?

 

[jsafdie]

Daiya --

Yes! It's Blackboard (formerly Web CT Vista); thanks so much for
intuiting that. And although I'll go back and try what John and Philip
have said in the past few posts, I think that your advice will
ultimately do the trick . . . IF, of course, I can figure out where in
Blackboard that option you mention is! I'll dig around for that . . .
(right now, as I hope I've made clear, students attach their files to
me via e-mail or some other Assignment Tool, and when I click on the
link for their attachment, it shows up immediately on my desktop --
or, as Philip and John say above, some other folder I create for the
purpose -- and yet when I drag that file into the converter, it
disappears and no .rtf file takes its place).

Thanks to all . . . it would be great if I could figure this out!

Joe

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Lovely! My Blackboard folk actually mis-answered my direct question
about doing this, so I thought it might be a possibility that you didn't
know.

When you go into the Gradebook, instead on clicking on the student's
name or the invisible !, click on the Assignment name. This will get
you about 9 or 10 options like Item Detail--one of them should be
something like Item Download that lets you Select All. Blackboard will
then offer to package a zip folder and let you download it. Then
unzipping the folder should get you unadulterated docx files. (Plus,
many fewer clicks)

Let's hope.

I'm not getting docx files yet, so have not tested this in any way.

Daiya

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Joe:

Ahhhh.... I see your problem

1) The file is corrupt. Nothing will open it, including Word 2007 in
Vista.

2) Examine the file name carefully and you will see it has two extensions,
one after the other: .docx.zip. What you need to do is "remove" the second
extension. You do not unzip it, you simply change the name of the file to
delete the .zip and leave the .docx as the last extension.

3) The name is full of %20 -- this is supposed to be a "space" for web
browsers. But the % character can cause problems. The should have replaced
each "%20" with a space.

Even if you do all of that, the thing still won't open, in either Word 2007
or the Converter. It is very rare to see a document that bad: Word 2007
can't even recover the unformatted text from it, so it's really pooched.

Sorry: You need to get back to the source and say "A Microsoft MVP and
Microsoft Word Consultant says this document is so corrupt Word 2007 can't
open it. Please fix."

Cheers

Daiya --

Yes! It's Blackboard (formerly Web CT Vista); thanks so much for
intuiting that. And although I'll go back and try what John and Philip
have said in the past few posts, I think that your advice will
ultimately do the trick . . . IF, of course, I can figure out where in
Blackboard that option you mention is! I'll dig around for that . . .
(right now, as I hope I've made clear, students attach their files to
me via e-mail or some other Assignment Tool, and when I click on the
link for their attachment, it shows up immediately on my desktop --
or, as Philip and John say above, some other folder I create for the
purpose -- and yet when I drag that file into the converter, it
disappears and no .rtf file takes its place).

Thanks to all . . . it would be great if I could figure this out!

Joe

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[jsafdie]

Thanks so much, Daiya, but I'm still lost -- when I go to my Grade
Book and click on the Assignment, nothing like what you say pops up.
You are using the version that used to be called "Vista," right?

(Sent you a private e-mail about this which may or may not get to you,
as there's no sense in subjecting the newsgroup to talk about
Blackboard).

Joe