Someone asked me this question and I was stumped. He has a bunch of Word documents created in Word 2000. He said he could open them before in Word 2003 even. I asked him if he saved them in Word 2003 before and that's why it wouldn't work on Word 2000...he said he didn't save them. He even tried opening them up using Word 2003 now and it still won't work.

The error he gets (even after installing the coverter) is asking him to select the proper encoding to open the file with. I will attach an image of the message he's getting. He's also getting a similar error with Excel spreadsheets...also originally created using Excel 2000.

We both tried using the Windows (default) and all the other options there to no avail. He says the document itself is English. I could "preview" it using Notepad. I see a bunch of garbled text in the top and bottom sections. But I also see some actual readable text in the middle.

What could be the reason for this and how should he open it? This is not just happening to one file. He has a lot of these and it seems to be happening to all of them. Same thing on my laptop.

Here are the files and images:

Word document
Excel spreadsheet
Image of error in Word

Thanks.

I opened it in Word, though Word did tell me that my current version of Word didn't support the format the document was in and asked me to install stuff, but I refused. It came out similar to your preview in notepad--there's some garbled text at the top, then there's plenty of content, and finally some garbled text at the bottom. I wonder if this has something to do with page breaks? Because apparently all my garbled text is nested with many page breaks.

Also, did he write it in some other language? Often times when I write things in other languages not supported by Word, everything works fine while I'm writing, but after I save the file, close it, and then reopen it, the text becomes garbled.]

Also, did you try opening the file in a bunch of different encodings? Maybe one of them will somehow hit the target.

This post has been edited by Arbitrary: Jul 10 2006, 05:57 AM

All I have to say is

"I HATE MICROSOFT OFFICE."

On a related note, it's nice to see you using YouSendIt. Haven't seen much of that, but I am constantly using it for file transfers and the like. Glad to share that little connection

I asked him before I posted here if he wrote it in a different language. He said no.

Would page breaks cause those issues though? Shouldn't Word recognize it? Never seen this before if it does cause it...

Yeah, I had to use YouSendIt. I thought we could attach it at first...after looking around the bottom of my reply messagebox and not finding it, I decided to upload it to that site.

I will ask him if there should be anything in those garbled text.

Any other suggestions?

I couldn't open it with word 2002.

any way you can re-post the files? the link expired and i wanted to try it too.

No problem. Re-uploaded them...

Excel
Image
Word

They should be able to be opened. Probably just needs that converter that it asks for in the beginning. I just choose Other and then select the Western USA entry there. It will show gibberish on the top and bottom still...but around the middle area it will have English text.

Thanks.

My useless internet prevented me from connecting to the internet for weeks. the file's expired again. if you're not fed up and still have the files, just email them to me at boobies4free@gmail.com
great email address that i use for all my signups.

Yes, I would also like to see those files, I see them expired too, don't you know any better file storage online services? if it is possible, put them somewhere online or just email them to me too at the address quatrux [at] gmail.com

for the record..

MS Office is bugged specially if you open them in Office 2003.. Please take note that even that you are not saving a file in Office 2003... the system saves that for you automatically to create a crash point retrieval.. [in case the program crash you can recover the data after it]..

the feature of Office proves to be an annoyance since who would want your files to be saved automatically without any information..

This happen for all documents created with Office 2000 that was opened by Office 2003..

the far best and worst error Office 2003 have is that on the first release.. specially on the OEM versions.. when you create file on Office 2000 and buy an upgrade of Office 2003.. Once installed.. it will tell you that all your documents are corrupted.. Fact is that it is a big LIE..

M$ is such a liar about that.. call them and they blame you.. a quick fix is to download OpenOffice at OpenOffice.org and and perform a save as "Office 97 or 98" format.. this will fix the program error but if you got access files and Power Point.. it is totally useless.. Open Office have a different algo when it comes to Powerpoint files and Access files..

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Here is the big reason.. Office 2000 and Office 2002 are similar.. but the backend software was a little modified in the 2002 version... the big problem arises when Office 2003 was released with a totally new backend program.. Seems that M$ want to squeeze so much money out of the user by giving announements that they will stop support for Office 2000.. I got that email twice from microsoft..

They give discounts on my country for bulk buying.. They have stated that Office 2003 have fix alot of glitch and bugs from the unstable 2000 version.. turns out that the 2003 version was NOT fully tested by M$.. weeks by weeks a new patch come and go.. they even released a service pack for it.. darn M$...

On the record... I still have Office 2000 and a handy OpenOffice.. I do most document on the OpenOffice.. Since I have a Fedora server.. I just can send the document to samba and open it in Fedora OpenOffice..

And you still can get Office 2000 on M$ here.. so much for the unsupported and unstable stuff they are saying.. M$ = bugs... The only reason now that M$ is still popular is that the elderly cant use the OpenOffice very well since of its new interface compare to M$ Office..

One more thing.. graphs in OpenOffice are not as good looking as the one in M$ Office.. And those creating presentations on OpenOffice are having a hard time showing the files to M$ Office users...

But I prefer OpenOffice since it have a built-in PDF writer..