Word Office 2004 not opening old Word Office X documents

[BRIAN BACCHUS]

I am having a problem opening up invoices that were created when I had
Office X¹s version of Word, now that I have Office 2004¹s version of Word.
What happens is that it opens to a blank doc and is trying open up the doc.
I evetually have to Force Quit Word each time. Then I sometimes get a
message that the file is corrupted and it asks whether I would like to
recover it. When I recover it, it looks nothing like what I did. Help!
Running OS 10.3.5 with Microsoft Office 2004 on a G4 power mac.
Brian

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Brian,

Are these invoices documents or templates? And how are you trying to open
them (double-click? file>open from within Word? from the Finder? from the
Project Gallery? from the My Templates folder?).

While it probably won't help this particular problem, you should update to
OS 10.3.6 anyway and be sure you have updated Office 2004 with the SP 1.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

Word Office 2004 not opening old Word Office X documents
I am having a problem opening up invoices that were created when I had Office X's version of Word, now that I have Office 2004's version of Word. What happens is that it opens to a blank doc and is trying open up the doc. I evetually have to Force Quit Word each time. Then I sometimes get a message that the file is corrupted and it asks whether I would like to recover it. When I recover it, it looks nothing like what I did. Help!
Running OS 10.3.5 with Microsoft Office 2004 on a G4 power mac.
Brian
You may want to try to open the files on a PC and then save them under a different name. Having done that, you can now to open these newly created files.

/ Fredrik

 

[BRIAN BACCHUS]

Hey Beth,
Sorry to take so long to get back to you regarding this, but I was away for
minute.
These are documents made from a Office X Word template. I've tried to open
them by, double clicking on the file, file>open within Word, from the Finder
and the Project Gallery.
I usually get an error message that reads:
"Word encountered file corruption while opening ....doc. Part of this
document may be recoverable. Attempt recovery now?"
Then when I try to recover it, it of course looks like something like this:

PLACEHOLDER
USERPROPERTY Company
SOULFEAST MUSIC
= ""
DOCPROPERTY _Company
Company Name
USERPROPERTY Company
SOULFEAST MUSIC
SOULFEAST MUSIC
\* MERGEFORMAT
SOULFEAST MUSIC
200 Washington Park
Brooklyn,
PLACEHOLDER
USERPROPERTY WorkState
= ""
DOCPROPERTY _WorkState
USERPROPERTY WorkState
\* MERGEFORMAT
PLACEHOLDER
USERPROPERTY WorkZip
11205-4007
= ""
DOCPROPERTY _WorkZip
Postal
USERPROPERTY WorkZip
11205-4007
11205-4007
\* MERGEFORMAT
11205-4007
PLACEHOLDER
USERPROPERTY WorkCountry
= ""
DOCPROPERTY _WorkCountry
Country
USERPROPERTY WorkCountry
\* MERGEFORMAT
etc.

It's as if it doesn't recognize the original template that was used and just
lists all the information from the invoice. Unfortunately, I deleted
Office X from my Applications and can't find original software disc. Do you
think that that is the problem? I have updated to 10.3.6 and also updated
the microsoft Office 2004 software.
Brian

 

[BRIAN BACCHUS]

Fredrik,
I was away for a minute. Sorry to take so long to reply. Anyway, I don¹t
have a PC. Are you suggesting that I burn the file to disc and then visit
someone with a PC, rename the files and I will be able to open them. It
seems like Word 2004 is recognizing the template I used to create these
invoices in Word X. Why would renaming them work? And would I have to do
that for all the invoices that were created by WordX?
Brian

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Brian:

What both of them are saying to you is that the file *is* corrupted and you
have a real problem on your hands.

When you tell Word to attempt a recovery on a file, it opens it in a
text-only mode. You see part of the internal structure of the file and no
formatting. Once a file has been saved like that, the formatting is gone
forever.

If you look in File>Open, you may see "Enable" set to "recover Text from Any
File". If it is, you need to explicitly change it back to "All Documents"
and open a document to reset it. If you don't every document you have will
open this way. It's a bug.

Because your files are corrupt, the only thing that will save them is to
rebuild them, if you CAN get them open. Taking them to a PC won't help.
Word 2004 is a later model than Word 2003 and is more capable of opening a
damaged document than PC Word is.

If you can get the file open:

1) Carefully copy everything EXCEPT the last paragraph mark.

2) Close the document

3) Create a new blank document

4) Paste.

Notes:
Turn your Show/Hide button on so you can see what you are doing. If you
copy the last paragraph mark, you will paste your problem back in.

Saving the document as a "Web Page" will accomplish the same thing. You
then reopen the web page version and re-save as a document. However, if the
document is badly corrupted, the save will fail.

With things like invoices, the corrupted file sometimes refers to a template
that calls in active logic. If that's the case with your files, it can be
the template that is corrupted. Get back to us if that is the case, you
need to do some extra steps.

Hope this helps

Fredrik,
I was away for a minute. Sorry to take so long to reply. Anyway, I don¹t
have a PC. Are you suggesting that I burn the file to disc and then visit
someone with a PC, rename the files and I will be able to open them. It seems
like Word 2004 is recognizing the template I used to create these invoices in
Word X. Why would renaming them work? And would I have to do that for all
the invoices that were created by WordX?
Brian

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410