Opening Old Word Files

[bfeinknopf]

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: intel

I have a letter I wrote years ago in either the original Word or Word 97. I was written in 1999. I am running Microsoft Office 2007 and it cannot open it in any form Rich Text, etc. Does anyone know how I might be able to still open or recover this file.

Your response is greatly appreciated.

 

[John McGhie]

Given that Word 2007 will open everything back to Word 6 format, that has to
be a Word 2 file.

You will get the text out by opening it with File>Open and change the Files
Type box to "Recover Text from Any File".

If that won't open it, then it's not a text file (it's corrupt, and nothing
will open it...)

Cheers

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: intel

I have a letter I wrote years ago in either the original Word or Word 97. I
was written in 1999. I am running Microsoft Office 2007 and it cannot open it
in any form Rich Text, etc. Does anyone know how I might be able to still open
or recover this file.

Your response is greatly appreciated.

--
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]

 

[Malke]

Given that Word 2007 will open everything back to Word 6 format, that has
to be a Word 2 file.

You will get the text out by opening it with File>Open and change the
Files Type box to "Recover Text from Any File".

If that won't open it, then it's not a text file (it's corrupt, and
nothing will open it...)

Hi, John - I was waiting to see what a Mac Office expert would answer
because I just ran into this situation with Word/Excel 2 files and Office
2007 on a PC. The issue (on the PC side anyway) is that Office 2007 SP1
will not open older formats as a security measure. You can fix this by
making some changes in the Windows registry. Of course, we don't have the
registry on Macs (yay!) so that fix won't work.

What I'm wondering is if the OP could possibly open those old Word 2 files
on a PC running either an older version of Office or one that has the
"older format fix". Or are Mac Word formats different/incompatible with PC
Word, because of the line ending and/or being writtten for the old Apple
processor? If this latter is the case, would something like the DataViz
MacLink work for the OP?

Thanks for your input.

Malke

 

[mxk]

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: intel

I have a letter I wrote years ago in either the originalWordorWord97. I was written in 1999. I am running Microsoft Office 2007 and it cannot open it in any form Rich Text, etc. Does anyone know how I might be able to still open or recover this file.

Your response is greatly appreciated.

Hi,

I think you can try a utility called Advanced Word Repair to repair
your Word document. It works rather well for my corrupt Word
documents.
Its web address is http://www.datanumen.com/awr/

Alan

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Malke:

My guess is "No".

The Word 2 format was a simple command-stream, it's the old Word for
DOS/Windows Write format.

Since he cannot get anything out of that file with "Recover Text" then
neither can any converter.

If you use Recover Text on a Word 2 file, you see the commands embedded in
the text, but the readable text comes out.

He's getting character salad: so I suspect that the file is mangled somehow.
It might be compressed, it might be encoded, we can't tell. But if Recover
Text can't read it, nothing else can either.

Cheers

Hi, John - I was waiting to see what a Mac Office expert would answer
because I just ran into this situation with Word/Excel 2 files and Office
2007 on a PC. The issue (on the PC side anyway) is that Office 2007 SP1
will not open older formats as a security measure. You can fix this by
making some changes in the Windows registry. Of course, we don't have the
registry on Macs (yay!) so that fix won't work.

What I'm wondering is if the OP could possibly open those old Word 2 files
on a PC running either an older version of Office or one that has the
"older format fix". Or are Mac Word formats different/incompatible with PC
Word, because of the line ending and/or being writtten for the old Apple
processor? If this latter is the case, would something like the DataViz
MacLink work for the OP?

Thanks for your input.

Malke

--
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]

 

[Malke]

Hi Malke:

My guess is "No".

The Word 2 format was a simple command-stream, it's the old Word for
DOS/Windows Write format.

Since he cannot get anything out of that file with "Recover Text" then
neither can any converter.

If you use Recover Text on a Word 2 file, you see the commands embedded in
the text, but the readable text comes out.

He's getting character salad: so I suspect that the file is mangled
somehow.
It might be compressed, it might be encoded, we can't tell. But if
Recover Text can't read it, nothing else can either.

Thanks very much. I appreciate the information.

Malke

 

[Peter Bakker]

The Word 2 format was a simple command-stream, it's the old Word for

DOS/Windows Write format.

Since he cannot get anything out of that file with "Recover Text" then
neither can any converter.

If you use Recover Text on a Word 2 file, you see the commands embedded in
the text, but the readable text comes out.

The recover text function sounds like nothing more than recovery of readable
text strings from a binary file, e.g. similar to using a text viewer with a
binary file.

Older DOC file formats, e.g. used by Word for DOS, no longer appear to be
supported by Microsoft. However, there is still a way to access some old
Microsoft Word file formats by using the converters from an older converter
pack. These are not linked from the Microsoft website but can still be
downloaded as a self-extracting EXE file at
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/WDSUPCNV.EXE. The package contains a
README file with instructions for using the converters. The converter files
for older Microsoft formats are Write32.cnv (Windows Write 3.0 or 3.1) and
Doswrd32.cnv (Microsoft Word 4.x, 5.x, and 6.x for MS-DOS).

These converters worked with an installation of Microsoft Word Viewer 97 on
Windows NT 4.0 as well as Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003 running on
Windows XP.

Other links that may be helpful:
http://help.lockergnome.com/office/Converting-Word-DOS-files-ftopict684375.html
http://wordtips.vitalnews.com/Pages/T000791_Converting_Word_for_DOS_Documents.html
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/235928

Peter Bakker