Sr. Citizen Needs Help, Please: WORD shows Nothing, But NotepadShows "Gibberish" ?

[Bob]

Hello,

Sr. Citizen, and I guess I'll blame my tale of woe on that.
Would sure appreciate some help, please.

Wrote a long document in WORD 2007.

Thought I saved it, but but when I open it up again, it is totally
blank. File name I gave it is there, but everything is blank.

Can't imagine why.
Any thoughts ?

And, if I open it up in Notepad, it sure looks like "something" is there.

Loads of "gibberish," or garbage.
Properties shows about 15K, which is probably about right.

So, something is there that Notepad sees, but not WORD.

Any way of translating back to something readable from what Notepad sees ?

Much thanks,
Bob

 

[Stefan Blom]

Have you tried Open and Repair? In the Open dialog box (Ctrl+O), navigate to
the document and select it. Click the arrow on the Open button, and then
click Open and Repair.

Note that you can't open any Word document in NotePad; that's why you see
"gibberish" when you try. Unlike plain text files (*.txt), Word documents
include more data than the text we read (formatting is just one example).

 

[RobertMacy]

Have you tried Open and Repair? In the Open dialog box (Ctrl+O),
navigate to the document and select it. Click the arrow on the Open
button, and then click Open and Repair.

Note that you can't open any Word document in NotePad; that's why you
see "gibberish" when you try. Unlike plain text files (*.txt), Word
documents include more data than the text we read (formatting is just
one example).

I'd work on a copy, not the original, just in case.

Any text editor can open AND read the text inside a .doc Ignore the
gibberish, ctrl-c scoop up the text and transfer to a true text .txt file.

Sounds like the OP saved a blank document. 15kB sounds like only the
formatting with NO text.

 

[Stefan Blom]

But note that not all file formats may be readable (even if you disregard
the gibberish) in a text editor. You could try the file converter "Recover
Text from Any File" in Word's Open dialog box (Ctrl+O).