Encoding Error Opening Word

[Don MacKay]

Word documents open with the File Conversion window showing first. No matter
what encoding I select I still get incomprehensible characters. This occurrs
in only one folder and only in files dated 11 March 2007 or earlier. Files
after that date open correctly.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Do you have Windows set to compress files above a certain age? Can Word open
them without their being uncompressed?

 

[Don MacKay]

Not to my knowledge. This would have been inadvertant if I had done so.

 

[Don MacKay]

I have also tried opening with Word Pad and "Recover test from any file" but
get the same results

 

[Terry Farrell]

It is a sure sign that the document is badly corrupt. Has it been
transferred using email or via removable media of some type?

From Word, try using File, Open, selecting the document and then use the
Open and Repair option (the little arrow attached to the OPEN button. If
that fails, then it pretty much seems blown away unless you have a backup
somewhere.

 

[Don MacKay]

Around that date I did make a copy of part of the folder to CD. I do recall
having a glitch as I may have initially tried to copy the whole folder,with
subfolders, which was too large for CD and may have somehow aborted the
process; my memory is a bit foggy now on exactly what I did. Today I tried
your recommendation of "Open and Repair" to no avail and fear the files are
corrupt as you suggested. Regrettably, I have overwritten my C drive backup
since then as I had not yet discovered the problem folder; there is one big
lesson learned! I have a paper copy of the main document that I need out of
the folder (60 pages) so will be doing some scanning back into Word today.
Much thanks to both of you. Don

 

[khaled]

the file was in a usb flash and i worked in it , saved it and now it says
"select the encoding that make your document readable"
all the options didnt make the file readable and also , when i choose
uni-code(UNI-8)
it go automaticly to windows default and the other encoding option went to
unselectable !

still dont have the right encoding !

 

[Terry Farrell]

It is corrupt. NEVER work directly with any type of removable media. ALWAYS
copy to the local HDD before opening/editing/printing a document. Always
save to the local HDD and COPY to the rem media.

 

[khaled]

It is corrupt
it's important data cant be corrupt is there any way to fix it,, software
tool or manual !!

 

[Terry Farrell]

If Open and Repair doesn't work, try opening it in WordPad. If that fails,
try Word, Open, Recover Text from any File. But my gut instinct tells me
that it is corrupt beyond repair.

If you do get it to open in Word using Open and Repair, use SaveAs and chose
the XML format, close the document and then reopen it and use SaveAs to
convert back to DOC format.

Terry

 

[Roy Chung]

This is exactly what happened to me. I have a very important essay that I've been working on for the past two weeks and I was trying to open it at the lab to print it out and it gives me the exact same encoding error. I've tried every repair option; repair as text, open as doc.,docx.,word/notepad/html/htm/web file, AND NOTHING WORKS!!!!

My paper comes out as gibberish! The first half and chunks of the latter are missing, the formatting is all gone, and it changed from 12 pages of coherent text into 80 pages of symbols!

HELP PLEASE!

 

[Roy Chung]

This is exactly what happened to me. I have a very important essay that I've been working on for the past two weeks and I was trying to open it at the lab to print it out and it gives me the exact same encoding error. I've tried every repair option; repair as text, open as doc.,docx.,word/notepad/html/htm/web file, AND NOTHING WORKS!!!!

My paper comes out as gibberish! The first half and chunks of the latter are missing, the formatting is all gone, and it changed from 12 pages of coherent text into 80 pages of symbols!

HELP PLEASE!

 

[Terry Farrell]

Did you perchance save the document to a flash drive to take to the lab? If
so you have just learnt a very tough lesson. Never save or work Word
directly with any type of removable media. Always work with the hard disk
and then Copy to/from the rem media.

If this is pre Word 2007, you may be able to rescue some of the text using
Open and Repair, Recover Text from Any File or open it in WordPad. If this
is Word 2007 in docx format, then the latter option does not work.
Sometimes, saving as an xml type will repair partially corrupt docs, but
once they are badly corrupted, there's little you can do.

 

[Hora Here]

I just have the same problem. I've tried about every single suggestion
posted on Microsoft's webpage and nothing works. Can some one please help
me?

 

[Guest]

If you saved or worked with a flash drive, the same answer.

Terry

 

[Rthomps]

I have read eveyones comments about this problem. I'm not sure it my issue
is the same as everyone else because I had an added complication of switching
from my home computer that has Word 2007 and work computer with Word 2003.
But i have been working on Word DOCS on my junk drive for awhile without a
problem.

Based on what I read I am lucky.

I sent the file to my Awesome IT guy and he recovered it for me. This is
what he did.

"I saved the document and renamed it with the Office 2007 extension ".docx".
Then I opened it with Word 2003 and it converted it and opened the document
with formatting, etc. I then saved it as a Word doc instead of Word 2007.
Word 2003 with the converter pack will open and save docs in the Word 2007
format and it will save the document in the Word 2003 format."

Like I said my situation may be different since I am working in 2003 and
2007.

I hope this helps someone.

 

[James Boggs]

I have a similar problem o everyone else, in that it is a regular .doc file
and it tries to open with the decoder, but none of the options are available.
I did open the file from a usb flas drive, but it comes up with an error
saing that it can't start the word converter 632. I looked this up, and found
a fixit for it, but it didn't help. Does anyone know whats wrong?

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

You should NEVER open a document directly from a flash drive. It should
ALWAYS be copied to the hard drive and then open it from there.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Yves Dhondt]

Have you tried the most obvious step? Copy the file to your hard drive and
try to open it from there.

If you can't get Word to open it, you might want to consider downloading the
free Open Office Writer. It's a text editor that can handle doc files and is
slightly more capable in handling corrupted documents. It might introduce
some other changes to your layout, but if you at least get your content
back, that should be a good start.

Yves