Opening saved Word file

[Guest]

I'm using the student version of Office 2003. I have a number of Word files
originally saved in a previous version that will not open in my current
version. Actually, that's not correct.....they do open, but the file only
displayes an endless string of the same character. It may be a 'm' in one
document, a 'p' in another, a '-' in a third, but it's only that one
character.....no spaces, no variation of any kind. Is there some sort of
function that will allow me to convert these files?

 

[Beth Melton]

It could be they are opening in the wrong format. Go to Tools/Options and in
the General section, select Confirm conversion at Open. Then when you open a
file, if the Confirm Conversions dialog box displays, select Word Document
and see if that rectifies the problem.

If it doesn't then see if the documents look the same when opened on another
computer using Word 2003.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Co-author of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Guest]

I went in and selected the 'Confirm Conversion at Open' box (it was not
checked). Now when I open the files in question I get a 'Convert File' box
with multiple 'convert file from' choices, none of which make any difference
except the 'Convert Text from Any File' choice which opens a clean document
without any text whatsoever. I tried opening the files on a different
computer with Word 2003 and got the same result.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What is the source of the files? Are they on your hard drive? How did they
get there (that is, were they transferred on a floppy or other removable
medium or drive)?

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

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