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Mac Forum / Applications / MS Office / June 2008Opening Old Word Files
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Processor: intel I have a letter I wrote years ago in either the original Word or Word 97. I was written in 1999. I am running Microsoft Office 2007 and it cannot open it in any form Rich Text, etc. Does anyone know how I might be able to still open or recover this file. Your response is greatly appreciated. Given that Word 2007 will open everything back to Word 6 format, that has to be a Word 2 file. You will get the text out by opening it with File>Open and change the Files Type box to "Recover Text from Any File". If that won't open it, then it's not a text file (it's corrupt, and nothing will open it...) Cheers On 9/3/08 5:12 PM, in article ee92d68.-1@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw, > Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) > Processor: intel [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > Your response is greatly appreciated.  SignatureDon't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/ Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to. John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/ Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50 +61 4 1209 1410, mailto:john@mcghie.name > Given that Word 2007 will open everything back to Word 6 format, that has > to be a Word 2 file. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > If that won't open it, then it's not a text file (it's corrupt, and > nothing will open it...) > On 9/3/08 5:12 PM, in article ee92d68.-1@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw, > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] >> >> Your response is greatly appreciated. Hi, John - I was waiting to see what a Mac Office expert would answer because I just ran into this situation with Word/Excel 2 files and Office 2007 on a PC. The issue (on the PC side anyway) is that Office 2007 SP1 will not open older formats as a security measure. You can fix this by making some changes in the Windows registry. Of course, we don't have the registry on Macs (yay!) so that fix won't work. What I'm wondering is if the OP could possibly open those old Word 2 files on a PC running either an older version of Office or one that has the "older format fix". Or are Mac Word formats different/incompatible with PC Word, because of the line ending and/or being writtten for the old Apple processor? If this latter is the case, would something like the DataViz MacLink work for the OP? Thanks for your input. Malke SignatureMS-MVP Elephant Boy Computers www.elephantboycomputers.com Don't Panic! Hi Malke: My guess is "No". The Word 2 format was a simple command-stream, it's the old Word for DOS/Windows Write format. Since he cannot get anything out of that file with "Recover Text" then neither can any converter. If you use Recover Text on a Word 2 file, you see the commands embedded in the text, but the readable text comes out. He's getting character salad: so I suspect that the file is mangled somehow. It might be compressed, it might be encoded, we can't tell. But if Recover Text can't read it, nothing else can either. Cheers On 10/3/08 11:12 PM, in article ut1CXSrgIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl, >> Given that Word 2007 will open everything back to Word 6 format, that has >> to be a Word 2 file. [quoted text clipped - 34 lines] > > Malke SignatureDon't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/ Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to. John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/ Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50 +61 4 1209 1410, mailto:john@mcghie.name > Hi Malke: > [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > It might be compressed, it might be encoded, we can't tell. But if > Recover Text can't read it, nothing else can either. Thanks very much. I appreciate the information. Malke SignatureMS-MVP Elephant Boy Computers www.elephantboycomputers.com Don't Panic! > The Word 2 format was a simple command-stream, it's the old Word for > DOS/Windows Write format. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > If you use Recover Text on a Word 2 file, you see the commands embedded in > the text, but the readable text comes out. The recover text function sounds like nothing more than recovery of readable text strings from a binary file, e.g. similar to using a text viewer with a binary file. Older DOC file formats, e.g. used by Word for DOS, no longer appear to be supported by Microsoft. However, there is still a way to access some old Microsoft Word file formats by using the converters from an older converter pack. These are not linked from the Microsoft website but can still be downloaded as a self-extracting EXE file at ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/WDSUPCNV.EXE. The package contains a README file with instructions for using the converters. The converter files for older Microsoft formats are Write32.cnv (Windows Write 3.0 or 3.1) and Doswrd32.cnv (Microsoft Word 4.x, 5.x, and 6.x for MS-DOS). These converters worked with an installation of Microsoft Word Viewer 97 on Windows NT 4.0 as well as Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003 running on Windows XP. Other links that may be helpful: http://help.lockergnome.com/office/Converting-Word-DOS-files-ftopict684375.html http://wordtips.vitalnews.com/Pages/T000791_Converting_Word_for_DOS_Documents.html http://support.microsoft.com/kb/235928 Peter Bakker On 3月9日, 下午3时42分, bfeinkn...@officeformac.com wrote: > Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) > Processor: intel > > I have a letter I wrote years ago in either the originalWordorWord97. I was written in 1999. I am running Microsoft Office 2007 and it cannot open it in any form Rich Text, etc. Does anyone know how I might be able to still open or recover this file. > > Your response is greatly appreciated. Hi, I think you can try a utility called Advanced Word Repair to repair your Word document. It works rather well for my corrupt Word documents. Its web address is http://www.datanumen.com/awr/ Alan |
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