Word 2007 compatibilty with docs created in Word 2000

[Guest]

I am hoping someone can help me.

When I open documents in Word 2007 that were created in Word 2000 all that
appears on the page(s) are little boxes filling the entire page(s).

"Compatibility Mode" does not turn on when opening the document(s).
"Convert" is not an option under the Microsoft Office Button.

My computer is running Windows XP.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Penny

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?UFI3?=,

When I open documents in Word 2007 that were created in Word 2000 all that
appears on the page(s) are little boxes filling the entire page(s).

"Compatibility Mode" does not turn on when opening the document(s).
"Convert" is not an option under the Microsoft Office Button.

It appears these documents are damaged. Do you still have Office 2000
installed on a machine? Can it open these documents, still?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your reply Cindy.

No, I don't have Office 2000 installed. I upgraded to Office 2007.

The Word files are stored on CD and I was able to open them just fine with
Word 2000 before the upgrade.

Penny

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?UFI3?=,

No, I don't have Office 2000 installed. I upgraded to Office 2007.

The Word files are stored on CD and I was able to open them just fine with
Word 2000 before the upgrade.

Do you have a spare machine somewhere, where you could remove 2007 and load
2000 again? Because I think that's going to be your best bet for recovering
the documents.

Although the binary file format hasn't changed officially since Word 97, it
has of course had to change to accommodate new functionality. Microsoft has
just done an incredible job of building internal converters into each
subsequent version so that they can all read each others' files. But
sometimes a glitch slips into a document and, while the original version can
still open it a different version can't.

From your description, my guess would be that there was a problem in your
Word 2000 Normal.dot that was passed into all the documents. Based on
experience , my guess would be that it may have something to do with
numbering (a notorious "document-breaker", especially in 97 and 2000). So I
think the only way you can recover them will be to open them in 2000 then
save to round-trip HTML or RTF format (you'll need to experiment).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail