WORRIED re/ damaged Word documents

[Tom]

I recently recovered a corrupted Word 2002 file, using
the excellent documentation in Knowledge Base. After
recovering the file, I saved it as rich text, then re-
saved it as Word 2002. I found that this new Word file
was over 20% smaller than the original Word file had
been. I repeated this with two other large Word
documents I'm currently working on, and experienced
similar size reductions. I've scanned all three, and
cannot see any differences from the original Word docs.

So my QUESTIONS: 1) what can account for such a drastic
reduction in size? 2) and the corolary: am I losing
anything important? 3) should I do this "rtf
compression" w/ all large word docs I've been working on
for a while?

Many thanks for all thoughts,
Tom Mueller

 

[Mike Williams [MVP]]

I recently recovered a corrupted Word 2002 file, using
the excellent documentation in Knowledge Base. After
recovering the file, I saved it as rich text, then re-
saved it as Word 2002. I found that this new Word file
was over 20% smaller than the original Word file had
been. I repeated this with two other large Word
documents I'm currently working on, and experienced
similar size reductions. I've scanned all three, and
cannot see any differences from the original Word docs.

So my QUESTIONS: 1) what can account for such a drastic
reduction in size? 2) and the corolary: am I losing
anything important? 3) should I do this "rtf
compression" w/ all large word docs I've been working on
for a while?

1) Simpler/portable file formats like text, RTF and HTML generally require
more space to represent information. Word's native format is better
optimized for storing the non-textual/formatting data associated with your
document.
2) No you're not losing anything
3) That's up to you, but I would consider it more important that you have
off-line backups of all your files before you mess with them.


Mike Williams - Office MVP http://www.mvps.org/faq/

Please respond in the same thread on this newsgroup - not by email!
Include details of your application and Windows versions, plus any
service pack updates. Answers may also be found by reading recent
posts, checking the FAQs or searching the relevant Google archive at.
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=microsoft.public

 

[Guest]

Mike -- this is invaluable, thanks!
Tom

-----Original Message-----


1) Simpler/portable file formats like text, RTF and HTML generally require
more space to represent information. Word's native format is better
optimized for storing the non-textual/formatting data associated with your
document.
2) No you're not losing anything
3) That's up to you, but I would consider it more important that you have
off-line backups of all your files before you mess with them.


Mike Williams - Office MVP http://www.mvps.org/faq/

Please respond in the same thread on this newsgroup - not by email!
Include details of your application and Windows versions, plus any
service pack updates. Answers may also be found by reading recent
posts, checking the FAQs or searching the relevant Google archive at.
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=microsoft.public


.