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| Thread ID: 37365 | 2003-09-05 02:46:00 | Corrupt (?) Word document | bardin (1950) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 173133 | 2003-09-05 02:46:00 | My Dad is writing a book, using a word document (Word 2002 i.e. Office XP). Recently he left the document open, my little sister came along and played around on his PC, dunno what she did, but now his word doc is 3MB larger and appears to have become corrupt. The text is all in red and underlined, and has little text boxes off to the left that say 'formatted text.' Changing the font back to Arial 12 point black doesn't seem to resolve the issue (?!). I've tried everything I know, not that I'm a Word expert, but can't seem to recover the changes. I've tried copying and pasting all of the text to a new Word doc but I just get the same things in the new doc. 100 points and a beneficial blessing on your progeny in perpetuity if you can resolve this issue for me! | bardin (1950) | ||
| 173134 | 2003-09-05 02:54:00 | you could try saving it all as "unformatted text" in a .txt file and then re-loading it. this should kill off any odd formatting. |
robsonde (120) | ||
| 173135 | 2003-09-05 03:05:00 | Tell your father a magic word: "backup". Even a copy using "Save As" somewhere else on the hard disk at the end of every editing session would save a lot of tears. A copy on some medium (USB dongle?) in another room, or in another house is even better. :D Have you tried deleting the template file ... I forget what it's called --- is it "default.doc"? --- someone will know. That's what's doing the damage to your recover attempts. It will probably do the same to the alternative save as raw text, the moment you try to make it into a Word file again. |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 173136 | 2003-09-05 03:22:00 | Hey thanks for your help guys. I've tried saving it as a plain .txt doc and copying and pasting that back into Word. He had a lot of footnotes which seem to have all been chucked at the end, but other than that it should be relatively straightforward. As far as the backup goes, believe me I know. I go over there about once a week to RAR it up and save it to disk. To try to illustrate what I have to deal with here: he's more than happy installing a shareware firewall on his PC (in response to advice at Microsoft.com re the blaster worm) but doesn't believe I should need to show him how to use Windows Explorer because he 'only works with one file.' Arrrrgggggh! Any idea how I can advise someone how to backup a doc without knowing how to use Windows Explorer (no, please don't try to honestly answer that question...it's rhetorical :) |
bardin (1950) | ||
| 173137 | 2003-09-05 03:26:00 | normal.dot is the name ... just in case you need it. | Graham L (2) | ||
| 173138 | 2003-09-05 03:30:00 | First things first: make a copy of the the document as a backup so as not to lose all his work. Preferably store off the computer that it is on, eg floppy disk, CD or another computer. Next search for normal.dot and rename it to normal.old while Word is closed. Reopen and see if the document is back to normal. If not copy all of the text, open a new document and choose Paste Special, Unformatted text. Hopefully the text will now be unformatted. If so remember to make another backup. | tommy (2826) | ||
| 173139 | 2003-09-05 03:33:00 | Sorry, your reply was not there when I began my last post. | tommy (2826) | ||
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