Word cannot read document contents properly

[Lou Mitrev]

Hello,
I am using Windows XP Version 2002 SP1 and Office XP
(Word 2002 10.4109.3501 SP-1). I suddenly discovered
that, when I try to open word documents from several
folders on my hard drive, Word opens each document with
one huge long string of "ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ". These
symbols are not formatted and appear as a single
paragraph, with no spaces between them. Judging by the
number of pages that appear in the thus opened document,
they correspond to the length of the original document. I
searched the Microsoft database and used their "Word 2002
support template" tool to try and fix the problem, but
without success. What is going on? Other files on my hard
drive Word opens just fine, both older and newer ones. I
had not accessed these trouble files since last fall, and
had burnt a backup copy on a disk in October 2003. I
guess the problem had already occurred, because when I
pulled the disk and tried to access the copies of these
same files, the same thing happened. Also, other text
editors such as NotePad return the same "ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ".
Please help, these files are very important to me! I
can't for the life of me imagine how these, and only
these, files got corrupted.

 

[Jezebel]

go to File > Open and check what you have selected under 'Files of Type' --
make sure it's Word documents, not Recover text.



Hello,
I am using Windows XP Version 2002 SP1 and Office XP
(Word 2002 10.4109.3501 SP-1). I suddenly discovered
that, when I try to open word documents from several
folders on my hard drive, Word opens each document with
one huge long string of "ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ". These
symbols are not formatted and appear as a single
paragraph, with no spaces between them. Judging by the
number of pages that appear in the thus opened document,
they correspond to the length of the original document. I
searched the Microsoft database and used their "Word 2002
support template" tool to try and fix the problem, but
without success. What is going on? Other files on my hard
drive Word opens just fine, both older and newer ones. I
had not accessed these trouble files since last fall, and
had burnt a backup copy on a disk in October 2003. I
guess the problem had already occurred, because when I
pulled the disk and tried to access the copies of these
same files, the same thing happened. Also, other text
editors such as NotePad return the same "ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ".
Please help, these files are very important to me! I
can't for the life of me imagine how these, and only
these, files got corrupted.

 

[Lou Mitrev]

Tried that also, but without any change. Tried "Open and
repair" - no change either. PLs .help. Lou

 

[Jezebel]

Not good news. Just as well you have backups.


Tried that also, but without any change. Tried "Open and
repair" - no change either. PLs .help. Lou

 

[Guest]

Hi, Lou. Could it be that you are opening a temporary "owner" file associated with the real Word file? If the filename begins with ~ or ~$, then this is a temp file created by Word. There should be another file on your hard drive or backup for the same document that does not begin with a ~. Word is supposed to automatically delete the temp file when you close the document, but it doesn't always happen that way.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

When you burned these documents to CD, did you copy them from hard disk, or
did you try saving direct to CD?

If the latter, that is probably what produced this corruption - you see a
similar effect if you work on documents across a network and lose the
connection.

--
Margaret Aldis - Microsoft Word MVP
Syntagma partnership site: http://www.syntagma.co.uk


Tried that also, but without any change. Tried "Open and
repair" - no change either. PLs .help. Lou