opening windows 98 word files on XP

[Guest]

I just went from a Windows 98 PC to a XP Home Edition PC and can't open my old work files on floppy's. Are all my files useless???

 

[Rob Schneider]

And ... move the files to hard disk. Do not open or save files direct
to floppy disk when using Office apps. Surest way to corrupt them.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms

 

[NobodyMan]

And ... move the files to hard disk. Do not open or save files direct
to floppy disk when using Office apps. Surest way to corrupt them.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms

I've seen this post many times and don't believe it. I've opened
Office files of all varieties off floppies for years. So has everyone
in my organization. We seldom have problems.

I guess we are just the luckiest people in the world?

My personal opinion is this: so few people are using floppies anymore
that manufacturers have lowered their standards making them, causing
more easy data corruption.

Comments, anyone?

 

[Rob Schneider]

It could be an urban myth. My personal experience, and based on knowing
how Word in particular will save temp files, is that I've seen
corruption occur. It all depends on the size of the files, whether or
not people remove the floppy while working with it (yes, people have
done that), etc.

It is documented as an issue by the Word MVP's at
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/TipsAndGotchas.htm, Item 7.

As I said, it might be an urban myth. But it does conform with my
experience.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms

 

[purplehaz]

I've seen this post many times and don't believe it. I've opened
Office files of all varieties off floppies for years. So has everyone
in my organization. We seldom have problems.

I guess we are just the luckiest people in the world?

My personal opinion is this: so few people are using floppies anymore
that manufacturers have lowered their standards making them, causing
more easy data corruption.

Comments, anyone?

I think the problem might be that people think windows includes word, so
when they install xp and word doesn't popup when they try to open the files
they don't know what to do. There last oem computer may have had word so
assume all computers / windows versions have it.