Using Old Word Documents

[Laurie]

A year ago I upgraded my computer to both Tiger and MS Office 2004. I
have a lot of Word documents that are from previous versions of Word
many of which are no longer opening. The symbol on the file listing
has the typical W before the document name and the "info" says it's a
Word document 1.x-5.x. So I know the computer recognizes that it is a
Word document and not another word processor. When I click on "Open"
the document opens but then all I have is those nice little black
squares where there should be letters and punctuation. Any suggestions
on how I can recover my old documents?

Thank you!
Laurie

 

[little_creature]

1. Could that be caused by missing font? When open such a document try
to change font.
2. Could that be a problem of encoding? Try to set in Preferences
General>confirm conversion at open and then try to open document and
change different encoding if that will help
3. Try to run Word and do File>Open instead of double click on your file


Laurie said the following on 28.9.2006 4:14:

 

[Laurie]

1. Could that be caused by missing font? When open such a document try
to change font.
2. Could that be a problem of encoding? Try to set in Preferences
General>confirm conversion at open and then try to open document and
change different encoding if that will help
3. Try to run Word and do File>Open instead of double click on your file


Laurie said the following on 28.9.2006 4:14:

 

[Laurie]

I appreciate your suggestions. Unfortunately, neither of them worked.
I did change the font and the preferences but have to admit I don't
know what "encoding" is. If you could explain that maybe I could try
that as well. File, Open does the same as a double click. Thank you
for your suggestions.

Laurie

 

[CyberTaz]

I'm afraid you're problem is a little more complex than just a matter of
fonts & the encoding probably won't help either. It stems from the fact that
Word 5x & earlier used a completely different file structure in a very early
OS environment and that is several generations removed from current
versions.

The optimum situation would be if there is someone still running an earlier
version of Word in Pre-OS 9 that might be able to open the files for you &
save them in a different format, such as RTF. Unfortunately that isn't very
likely.

Another option might be a program from DataViz by the name of MacLink Plus
Deluxe. I know it has converters for as far back as Word 4 - whether that
includes 1-3 by inference I'm not sure. You might contact them for
clarification before you buy, but it is a very reliable product that has
been around for years & worth the price -$89.99 US on the web site, but you
can probably find it for somewhat less. Their site is;

http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/index.html

Lastly, you can try the File>Open - Enable: Recover Text From Any File which
may extract the text *only*, but will not preserve any formatting or graphic
content. I'd try on a *copy* of one of the files first to see how it works.

Good Luck |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[micki]

A year ago I upgraded my computer to both Tiger and MS Office 2004. I
have a lot of Word documents that are from previous versions of Word
many of which are no longer opening. The symbol on the file listing
has the typical W before the document name and the "info" says it's a
Word document 1.x-5.x. So I know the computer recognizes that it is a
Word document and not another word processor. When I click on "Open"
the document opens but then all I have is those nice little black
squares where there should be letters and punctuation. Any suggestions
on how I can recover my old documents?

Thank you!
Laurie

Are you going through Word when you do this or just looking on the hard
drive?

Try starting from the new version of Word (opening it) go to "File" >
"Open" find your old document click on it if it opends you can to a
"save as" and it gives you an option to make it compatible with the
nwere version. Another way is to open it some how thru and older
application and save it as something else that Word @004 can open. You
may have to try saving in various formats before you hit on something
useable. Maybe you can send it to someone through an email and they
have the format to open it and they can save it and send it to you??

Good luck/.

 

[micki]

A year ago I upgraded my computer to both Tiger and MS Office 2004. I
have a lot of Word documents that are from previous versions of Word
many of which are no longer opening. The symbol on the file listing
has the typical W before the document name and the "info" says it's a
Word document 1.x-5.x. So I know the computer recognizes that it is a
Word document and not another word processor. When I click on "Open"
the document opens but then all I have is those nice little black
squares where there should be letters and punctuation. Any suggestions
on how I can recover my old documents?

Thank you!
Laurie

Are you going through Word when you do this or just looking on the hard
drive?

Try starting from the new version of Word (opening it) go to "File" >
"Open" find your old document click on it if it opends you can to a
"save as" and it gives you an option to make it compatible with the
nwere version. Another way is to open it some how thru and older
application and save it as something else that Word @004 can open. You
may have to try saving in various formats before you hit on something
useable. Maybe you can send it to someone through an email and they
have the format to open it and they can save it and send it to you??

Good luck/.

 

[fogharty]

I work with very old Word files also. The only way I found to work with
them is to have Word 5 and Word 98 on an older Mac that boots in OS9.
In fact, that is the only reason we keep this older computer around. A
Word 5 doc might open in Word 98. Save that and then Word 2004 should
be able to open it.

Good Luck.

 

[Clive Huggan]

Odd, this. I don't have any problems opening Word 5 documents in Word 2004,
OS 10.4.3. And just in case my memory was failing, just now I opened a
document saved in 1994 (double-clicked it in Finder) and it opened fine.
Fonts used were Times and Helvetica.

Curiouser and curiouser ...

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
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