Thanks all. What I did manage to do is to crack the big file open by opening it with "Text Edit". This is a very stripped down program and I was able to see all the text. However, this program does not show any of the jpg's that I had loaded into the document. So, I copied one half of the document into a new word file and this left me with the other half which I can then work with again in a new file. I have all the scanned jpg's already in the computer and an older version of the document which I can use either as a guide (to remind me of exactly what I had inserted earlier) or as a source to once again rebuild the jpg's. I'm writing a book and was not counting on MS Word being such a disappointment. Mind you, Word these days has become overly complicated and I'd have to take an online course on You Tube just to upgrade my skill sets, if I really wanted to be a Word whiz. All in all, I think that the file is corrupt, I will attempt my first log into safe mode and see what happens. If this fails I can still rebuild the document from the jpg's in my computer. It is just about a weeks worth of scanning into my HP machine and carefully inserting. Going forward I will not allow any documents to go over 200 meg's, as this seems to be a danger zone. MS might disagree with me, but I have little respect for their software. Give me pre-Windows 95 any time. Thanks again.