RTF files corrupted

[CynthiaW]

I work in a group of Windows users who cannot always cope with straing
MS Word files, so I save my word files routinely as .rtf. Lately, these
files cannot be reopened. I get a message "file corrupted". Once I
managed to rebuild the file through MS-DOS, but what should I do to
keep it from happening? Reinstall WORD?

Thank you,

Cynthia

 

[mmmmark]

I work in a group of Windows users who cannot always cope with straing
MS Word files, so I save my word files routinely as .rtf. Lately, these
files cannot be reopened. I get a message "file corrupted". Once I
managed to rebuild the file through MS-DOS, but what should I do to
keep it from happening? Reinstall WORD?

Thank you,

Cynthia

I've seen this in using the Windows version of Word at work. It can happen
occasionally. The problem is that if a file was ever .rtf, it will carry
those vestiges even after it is opened and saved as a Word file. Usually,
if you do a file\Save As it will weed those things out.

I think the problem is going between formats. I believe that if you open
the file in TextEdit in OSX, that it will also fix documents sometimes. Try
that.

-Mark

 

[John McGhie [MVP -- Word and Word Mac]]

Hi Cynthia:

Don't work in RTF if you can possibly avoid it.

Send the Windows users simple Word files. Add the .doc extension so they
can't tell the difference, and do NOT tell them the document came from a
Mac.

Since the internal file format is exactly the same, they will never know the
difference. If they can't open it, there's a problem on their computer that
they need to fix.

NOTE: Send the files as .doc or as .zip. Don't send Stuffit, most
corporate Windows desktops can't open stuffit.

And tell the users not to try to open the files by double-clicking out of
their email. Windows security is supposed to prevent this, and it often
does

Cheers

--

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Business Analyst, Consultant Technical Writer
Microsoft MVP (Word, Word for Mac)
Sydney, Australia +61 (0)4 1209 1410