Re: Opening Old Word Files

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,

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

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

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.