Email Word attachment won't convert from Encoded Text

[rexv]

My wife's laptop computer has Word 2002. She receives email attachments
frequently from an office where she does some work. The .doc attachments they
send her don't open. Instead she gets a pop-up Convert File From: Encoded
Text which shows the File Conversion is Windows Default. When she converts
the attachment she gets gobledy-gook followed by rows of *y*s. We've tried
options other than Encoded Text with no success. What next?

Will appreciate any help anyone can give us!

 

[Terry Farrell]

They are being corrupted during transmission. Request the sender to ZIP the
documents before sending as an attachment. Zipping seems to make the
documents more robust when going through ISP's anti-virus.

 

[Terry Farrell]

It revises my diagnosis considerably <g>

It has to be something else then! Does this happen to any attached Word
document or only documents from that office? Are you using the same version
of Windows and Office as your wife?

Check under Control Panel, Regional Settings that the language is set
correctly. Then run Office XP Language Tool and check that it is also set to
the correct language too.

Terry

 

[Terry Farrell]

Officially, if you have a full licensed (MOLP) or retail pack, you are
permitted to install it on a desktop computer and a notebook computer -
providing that only one is in use any any given time.

If it is an OEM version that came with the computer, then it belongs only to
that computer and lives and dies with it. If you try to make a second
install of an OEM version, it will probably fail activation.

If she only has a free-standing version of Word XP, I presume that she is
using Outlook Express as her mail client or does she use a webmail account?
Is she saving the attachment to her local hard disk before trying to open
the document?

Terry

 

[Terry Farrell]

This is a puzzle then. The differences between Word 2000 to 2003 were very
small in that the file format is identical and only a few enhancements
weren't backwards compatible. Those incompatibilities would not cause this
problem though: all that would happen is the enhancements wouldn't show up
or would display incorrectly.

When she forwards documents to you which you are then able to open, I
presume she is forwarding the original email with attachment that you are
then able to open correctly?

What happens if she saves the attached document to her usual file location
and then creates a new email to you attaching the saved version: are you
still able to open it? My thoughts are that possibly it is the anti virus on
her own computer that is destroying the document. What AV is installed?

Terry

 

[Terry Farrell]

Righto. I'll wait for you to test the other way then.

Terry

 

[Terry Farrell]

That points to something on her computer other than Word that is corrupting
the document and the AV would seem the most likely suspect (it should be
scanning the attachment at the point it is Saved to the local HDD). See if
it is possible to disable the AV, then save the attachment to the local HDD.
Then try opening it in Word. If that doesn't work, try the Trend support
site and see if they have any information about this problem.

Terry

 

[rexv]

This is a knotty problem we have! Turned off PC-cillin and did the procedure
described below, but success still eludes us.

Let me thank you for all the time you've given to help us. I'm going to try
installing Office 2003 and also check support at TrendMicro -- but not until
after the holidays.

I appreciate your help. If I'm able to sort this out I'll re-post here and
let you know what we did, but that won't be in a day or two.

For now, thanks again and Happy Holidays to you!

 

[Terry Farrell]

Thanks. I'll be interested in finding the solution.

Terry