File opens as boxes instead of text.

[Guest]

I saved a friends lecture notes onto my USB flash drive. When I got home his
documents open as a ton of boxes instead of text. What happened?

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Did you save directly from Word to the flash drive, or did you save to the
HD & then use Windows Explorer to copy to the flash drive? If you did the
former, then the document most likely is corrupted.

 

[Guest]

So, the notes were on his harddrive and he used explorer and dropped them all
onto the flash drive at the same time. Is there a proper way to do this?
The first of about 12 files actually opened fine. The other eleven files I
get the boxes. If they are corrupted am I out of luck?
Thanks,
Steve

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Don't try to open them directly from the flash drive. Copy them to your HD
and then open from there.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

No luck there either. Is there something I can do to recover the files?

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

If he used Windows Explorer, then the
Word-corrupts-files-when-saving-directly-to-removable-media problem isn't
what's happening. Using Explorer is exactly what you're supposed to do. My
response was asking if you'd saved directly from Word to the flash drive. If
you didn't do that, then that particular cause of corruption isn't the
problem.

If 12 files are okay, and 11 aren't, then I would wonder instead about the
integrity of the flash drive itself, or about the integrity of the 11 files
in their original location.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for you help in this matter Herb. I purchased my flash drive off of
Ebay and have previously questioned the integrity of it. I called Sony to
ask a question one day, they told me they couldn't help me because my product
didn't have a product #. Even though it has there name on it, I wonder if my
seller overseas didn't make the flash drive himself and pawn it off to be
authentic Sony. In any event, thank you all for your help!

Sincerely,
Steve

 

[David Harris]

I had the same problem but it turned out that the original file was in pdf
format. That file had been recoverted to doc format. The reconversion just
put everything into text boxes.
I couldn't fix it either.