Error Opening Document - Word 2007

[Rosemary]

Hi,

A student of mine is getting the following error when she tries to open a
Word 2007 document she created: "The office open XML File Smith_Letter
cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents."

She has Office 2007 at her home - I don't know if she has Vista or Windows
XP as her OS.

So far I've read the following article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925175. But I'd prefer to learn from anyone
who has experience resolving this type of problem, so I can give her options
to try.

Many thanks,
Rosemary

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi,

A student of mine is getting the following error when she tries to open a
Word 2007 document she created: "The office open XML File Smith_Letter
cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents."

She has Office 2007 at her home - I don't know if she has Vista or Windows
XP as her OS.

So far I've read the following article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925175. But I'd prefer to learn from anyone
who has experience resolving this type of problem, so I can give her options
to try.

Many thanks,
Rosemary

That article really has no bearing on the problem of a document being damaged;
it refers only to the Building Blocks.dotx template.

First try repairing the document. In the Office button > Open dialog, select the
document, click the down arrow next to the Open button, and choose "Open and
Repair".

If that fails, start a new blank document. On the Insert ribbon, click the down
arrow on the Object button and choose "Text From File". Select the damaged
document and click the Insert button.

If that also fails, and if the document is fairly simple (all text, no graphics
or embedded objects), it's still possible to retrieve the unformatted text.
Start by making a copy of the file, and working only on the copy. Change the
filename extension from .dotx to .zip, then open the renamed file (Word 2007
document files are really zip files containing folders and XML files). Inside
the "word" folder, find and open the file document.xml. Each paragraph of the
original text will appear between the tags <w:t> and </w:t>, and you can copy
them to another document.