Missing style

[Andrea Reece]

I have a document that is being used by both Mac and Word users. The
document was created in Word 2004 for Mac. When opened on a Windows version
(lot the latest, I don't think), a message stating the file was corrupt was
shown.

When I opened the file in Word 2008 for Mac, it crashed Word. After it
crashed in 2008, it would no longer open in 2004.

When the original file was opened on Word 2007 for Windows, a message
appeared stating there were errors and asking whether to repair them. There
were two types of errors, one about graphics and borders and one about
numbered styles. After repairing the document, it opened on 2007 fine. The
user saved it as an RTF file and sent it to me.

Before I tried to open it, I killed the preferences files in both 2004 and
2008. I also repaired the file permissions on the hard drive.

I could open the RTF on Word 2004, but some of the styles and formatting
were wrong. Two of our styles defined by outline levels were messed up. Two
or three styles were renamed. For example, the bullet paragraph style was
now called Header Char, but it retained all of the stylistic properties.

After fixing all of the problems, all three users can open the document.
However, one problem still remains. The Footer style no longer appears in
the list of Available Styles in the Formatting palette. It does appear under
Format > Style when the List option is Styles in Use.

On Windows 2007, the style only appears when All Styles is selected. How do
I get it to reappear in the formatting palette without selecting all styles?

Thanks.

 

[Andrea Reece]

Although we had saved the DOC file to an RTF file, opened the RTF and saved
back to DOC after repairing the doc, obviously some corruption was
lingering.

Based on http://word.mvps.org/Mac/DocumentCorruption.html, I save the doc as
a web doc, opened that file and saved to a new DOC file.

After that, the style properly showed up in the Available Styles list.

Thanks for the resources that made this possible.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Andrea:

Well done!

I long since lost patience with Microsoft's suggestion to "Save to RTF to
fix a document".

RTF makes such a perfect copy of the document that it never fixes anything
Actually, that's not quite true: it will fix one very obscure issue
with numbering.

But other than that, I think RTF is a waste of time.

I go straight to "Web Page". If that doesn't fix it, I Maggie it as a next
step.

Save as Web Page

1. Open the document
2. File>Save As... And choose Web Page
3. In the bottom of the dialog, make CERTAIN ³Save entire file² is checked.
4. Save the file and close the document
5. Quit Word and re-start it
6. Open the Web Page version of the file
7. File>Save as and this time choose ³Document²
8. Give the file a different name, so you have the old one to go back to.
9. Check the file for missing bits.

If you choose ³Save Display information only² you strip out the code in the
file that enables Word to re-create a document from it later. By forcing
Word to re-express the file in a different format, you cause it to discard
any code it cannot understand. That fixes the problem, but it can lead to
missing text.

The Maggie:

1. Create a new blank document
2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last
paragraph mark
3. Copy it.
4. Paste in the new document.
5. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open.

This technique for de-corrupting is known as "Doing a 'Maggie'", after
Margaret Secara from the Word PC-L mailing list who first publicised the
technique.

Cheers

Although we had saved the DOC file to an RTF file, opened the RTF and saved
back to DOC after repairing the doc, obviously some corruption was
lingering.

Based on http://word.mvps.org/Mac/DocumentCorruption.html, I save the doc as
a web doc, opened that file and saved to a new DOC file.

After that, the style properly showed up in the Available Styles list.

Thanks for the resources that made this possible.

--

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, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]