HELP!! Word 2003 - corrupted a really important file

[msollicito]

I am writing a book, and although I never had a problem with Word 2003
before, it corrupted my file containing my manuscript! Help!! If you look
at the file it looks fine at first, but then you see that pictures and
hyperlinks are all screwed up - all the hyperlinks are preceded by !!
HYPERLINK, and there are some funny characters inserted all over the
document.. they look like paragraph markers etc..

Pictures are not shown, and instead there are codes like this
INCLUDEPICTURE "http://www.m2moms.com/images/blt_orng.gif" \*
MERGEFORMATINET

I tried Open and Repair and that hasnt fixed it.

 

[msollicito]

You can see the file at http://www.exceptiona.com/intranet/worldwidewomen.doc

I think it got corrupted when I had it open when I opened another file that
was corrupted..

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You have clearly just toggled the display of field codes and possibly
nonprinting characters. Press Alt+F9 to take care of the former and Ctrl+*
to deal with the latter. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm for more.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[msollicito]

Of course, I tried Alt+F9 and Ctrl + * before posting this here.. take a look
at the document itself, using the link above and you will see that doesnt
work.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

All I see is an orange bullet (as the filename implies). How about posting a
screen shot of the actual document?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Terry Farrell]

Suzanne

It's here http://www.exceptiona.com/intranet/worldwidewomen.doc

Terry

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm afraid this document is either irretrievably corrupted or was
(imperfectly) converted from another application (perhaps WordPerfect?). As
you've seen, what should be fields no longer are. In addition, although
footnote references and footnotes are both in place, they don't work as
expected (and for me the references display as empty squares).

I also got a popup saying a table in the document was corrupted and
suggesting Open and Repair. That might be a good start in any case, but I'm
afraid it is probably going to be necessary to recreate all the footnotes
and fields unless you can get a better version of the document from the
person who provided it.

For the pictures (I now see that I misread what you wrote about those), what
you can do is select the text INCLUDEPICTURE
"http://www.m2moms.com/images/blt_orng.gif" \* MERGEFORMATINET and press
Ctrl+F9 to convert it to a field, then F9 to update so that the picture is
displayed, then Shift+F9 to unlink it so that the picture will be embedded.
(I can't test this on the document you posted, as Find doesn't find any
instances of INCLUDEPICTURE.) You may be able to do the same with the
hyperlinks, but I've found that you cannot select text within these fields
unless you Alt+F9 to display field codes; despite the fact that this doesn't
change the appearance of the text one whit, apparently it changes its
behavior. Actually, on further experiment, I find that there is no way to
repair these hyperlinks; you'll have to cut the relevant part out, delete
the existing field, and then insert a new hyperlink. This document really is
badly corrupted.

For the footnotes, select the text of a note and cut it. Then delete the
footnote reference from the document body (and from the footnote area if
necessary), insert a new footnote (Ctrl+Alt+F) and paste in the cut content.
This goes faster than you might think.

Bottom line, though, is that this document is badly corrupted; I would
definitely try to get a better/different version from the sender.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org