Word 2003 not opening documents

[beemerdan]

Word 2003 recently has become unable to open documents, most of which were
created in Word, I'm getting a message that "There is insufficient memory...
Save document now" or Word does not recognize this ... please choose from
list of programs (although it does offer to automatically search the list
that option does not appear to work). I noticed that the file names of these
files has changed, now looking something like C:\...\._overlettertoday
The name I originally used is only the "overlettertoday", the periods and
underscore have "mysteriously appeared". My files are extremely important to
me (of course) and I'm worried this is a virus. Some of the files I have been
able to open and resave, some show nothing but code or gibberish.

 

[Terry Farrell]

It sure sounds like a virus like action.

 

[beemerdan]

After the original post, I ran two different virus scans, neither of which
showed any viruses, so while that is reassuring, it doesn't solve my problem.
There are some of these files that were originally created in Appleworks, but
converted (supposedly) at time of transfer, and some that were created in
Microsoft Word on a mac, but the problem is not exclusive to those files.

 

[Terry Farrell]

So these documents were transferred to your computer? How? Have they ever
opened on your computer?

Terry