Opening older Word documents

[Charles Victor Ganelin]

I have numerous documents (some .txt, some .doc) in Word 98 that will not
open in Word 2004 (using OSX 10.5.6, 2 GB RAM) either from Word or from the
Finder. If I try to Open from inside Word, the icons do appear as the older
Word icons, but I get the message: ³[title] is not a valid web archive.²
Even if I add the .doc suffix and the icon becomes a Word icon, the dialogue
box indicates that either the document is in use or might not be a Word
document.

However, I can open these documents in TextEdit, but cannot save as any kind
of Word document (UTF encoding, etc., are available, but still won¹t allow
the doc to be opened in Word).

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

Charles

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Charles:

If File>Open from within Word does not work, first check that you have set
"Type" to "Word Document". If you still get an error message, please give
us the exact text of it.

The file format in use by Word 98 and Word 2004 is exactly the same, so if
those files were saved out of Word 98, they should open straight up.

If you would like to zip one up and email it to me, I will have a look for
you.

Cheers

I have numerous documents (some .txt, some .doc) in Word 98 that will not
open in Word 2004 (using OSX 10.5.6, 2 GB RAM) either from Word or from the
Finder. If I try to Open from inside Word, the icons do appear as the older
Word icons, but I get the message: ³[title] is not a valid web archive.²
Even if I add the .doc suffix and the icon becomes a Word icon, the dialogue
box indicates that either the document is in use or might not be a Word
document.

However, I can open these documents in TextEdit, but cannot save as any kind
of Word document (UTF encoding, etc., are available, but still won¹t allow
the doc to be opened in Word).

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

Charles

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John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]