Open Old Word Docs

[RalphClats]

Isn't there an option in Preferences to allow all documents to be seen/opened?

Is it "Confirm file format conversion at open" under General?

 

[RalphClats]

Ralph
would you be able to send me one of the files that you are trying to open. for example the file you are trying to open with text edit.
Can you get another copy from the original source, or from a backup disk.

I can open all of them with TextEdit. Some are harder to read that others.

I can send you a file, but to do that I have to get my laptop out of my safe, fire it up and send from my Gmail account. Gmail has locked me out of my account on my desktop, saying too many failed attempts to log on. I had no failed attempts, so I suppose somebody tried to open my account multiple times and failed. I can send from a different device — my laptop — later today when things slow down.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Has LibreOffice been tried to see if it will open them?

Home | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

Free office suite – the evolution of OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx. Updated regularly, community powered.

www.libreoffice.org

 

[solowyer]

Has LibreOffice been tried to see if it will open them?

Home | LibreOffice - Free and private office suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

Free office suite – the evolution of OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx. Updated regularly, community powered.

www.libreoffice.org

I tried LibreOffice and was able to retrieve the text. The more I look and think about these files, I think they are Microsoft Windows EXEC files which cannot be opened on a Mac.
When you try to download from a Windows or Unix environment you may select the wrong file. There should be 2 files with the same at the source one is the actual Word file and the other is the EXEC file. Since there is no extension on the filename you have to be careful what you download.

The other thing that makes me suspicious is the file size is only 10 KB. For a Word file that is small.
When I save the file on a USB stick this is what I see, not a Word File but an EXEC file.
I think the original files need to be found.






I used the terminal app on my Macbook Pro, and it could not find the main file

Last login: Fri Oct 22 15:05:21 on ttys000
Ernies-MacBook-Pro:~ erniesolowy$ cd desktop
Ernies-MacBook-Pro:desktop erniesolowy$ unzip Arimo -d unzippedArimo
Archive: Arimo
End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not
a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the
latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
the last disk(s) of this archive.
unzip: cannot find zipfile directory in one of Arimo or
Arimo.zip, and cannot find Arimo.ZIP, period.
Ernies-MacBook-Pro:desktop erniesolowy$

 

[Slydude]

I tried LibreOffice and was able to retrieve the text. The more I look and think about these files, I think they are Microsoft Windows EXEC files which cannot be opened on a Mac.
When you try to download from a Windows or Unix environment you may select the wrong file. There should be 2 files with the same at the source one is the actual Word file and the other is the EXEC file. Since there is no extension on the filename you have to be careful what you download.

The other thing that makes me suspicious is the file size is only 10 KB. For a Word file that is small.
When I save the file on a USB stick this is what I see, not a Word File but an EXEC file.
I think the original files need to be found.

This may not be relevant but do any of the problem files have Word macros in them? Over the years there has been varying degrees of compatibility when documents containing macros are opened on a Mac. That's probably not the case though since the files will usually at least open.

 

[chscag]

I think we are beating a dead horse with all the additional suggestions.

I believe Randy came up with the correct reason and solution in his post #61.

As I stated before, I can open very old Word docs back from Office 1997 and maybe earlier with my current version of Word. But I don't ever remember using the "fast save" option which seems to alter the way the doc is put together. I would have thought that even with the fast save option implemented, Word should still be able to open those docs.

Some of you may remember that older versions of MS Office came with optional file format filters that could be used to open most any doc such as WordPerfect, WordStar, and even file formats used by macOS.

 

[Slydude]

I agree. Randy has probably hit on the reason for the problem. My comment was based on solowyer's last post when I realized I did not remember if files containing macros were saved in a different format.

I remember that ability to open such a wide variety of other files. Came in real handy when work was using WordPerfect and I had Word at home.

 

[RalphClats]

Please read the string:

• Randy's solution did not work because the selections he suggested do not exist in Word 16.54. He's using an earlier version of Word. See the screenshots. His subsequent suggestion in 16.54 didn't work either. Another contributor confirmed that. Randy then suggested going to the Microsoft forum.
• There are more than 200 old Word files I can't open. I created them on various Macs in various versions of Word.

What is a Word macro?

 

[Slydude]

The Microsoft products have a programming language built into them. The language has changed several times over the years, but essentially the idea is to perform some tasks automatically based upon, say, the specific input.

Just as an example, years ago, I made an Excel spreadsheet that contained 50 - 60 entries with several pieces of information on each entry. Using macros a few keypresses allowed me to do such things as:

1. Divide the master list into smaller lists based on specified criteria.
2. Sort the master list and print the list based upon several different search criteria.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Ralph, I don't know where you are located.

But if you live in the U.S., since you only have 200 files that need to be converted, and since I have no problem doing that, maybe you'd like to mail me all of your files on a USB flash drive, and I can convert them and return them to you on the same flash drive, converted?

 

[RalphClats]

Way back, I described the exec black box shown in the screen shot above. It shows for any file I select and try to open in Word. When I click on it, it shows the error message I quoted far above.

Thank you, Randy, for the flash drive offer.

I've developed a workaround that I should have recognized early on. I can open any of the files in TextEdit. I can then copy and paste the contents into a new Word .docx window and save with the original name.

Then I can change and enlarge the typeface. I can highlight and delete all the extraneous characters and save the resulting text. That will be much easier with some docs than others. Some have extraneous characters mixed in with the meaningful text. Some separate blocks of text from others, not in the original order. Some scatter the text throughout the window. Some stop in mid-sentence and contain nothing else.

By using this method, I can make sense of what's in the docs I can't open in Word. It's not a perfect solution, but it works for the most part.

Thanks everybody. Obviously, I'm not a techie. Computer hardware and software are pretty much foreign territory for me. They sure make research and writing easier.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I've developed a workaround that I should have recognized early on. I can open any of the files in TextEdit. I can then copy and paste the contents into a new Word .docx window and save with the original name.

TextEdit is a text editor, not really a word processor. Opening those files in TextEdit will cause you to lose just about all of the original formatting, and make it extremely difficult to retrieve the portion of any documents that were saved using Fast Saves.

If you don't want me to convert the files for you, and you like the idea of recovering just the text in the files using a text editor, let me recommend a free text editor that is a lot more powerful (but still easy to use) than TextEdit and which has tools to make it easier to clean up the extraneous stuff in each of those documents:

Tex-Edit Plus (free)

Trans-Tex Software

tex-edit.com

Tex-Edit Plus has a fairly unique Tools menu --> Cleanup Document command that will make short work of extraneous code and other things that aren't text. I don't know if Tex-Edit Plus runs on 64-bit only versions of the Mac OS though. So it might not run on Catalina or Big Sur.

 

[IWT]

I don't know if Tex-Edit Plus runs on 64-bit only versions of the Mac OS though.

According to their website, Randy, this app runs from 10.4 to 10.12; so it must be 64-bit.

Trans-Tex Software

www.tex-edit.com

Ian

 

[Randy B. Singer]

According to their website, Randy, this app runs from 10.4 to 10.12; so it must be 64-bit.

Yes, I checked that. But I have it working perfectly under 10.14, so it will run fine at least up to Mojave.

And just because it is listed as being for up to 10.12, doesn't mean that it won't run on both 32-bit and 64-bit Macs. It all depends on how it was written.

In any case, it's worth trying. It's free. At the very worst, it won't run and you just trash it.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

According to their website, Randy, this app runs from 10.4 to 10.12; so it must be 64-bit.

Trans-Tex Software

www.tex-edit.com

Negative. I just downloaded it and it has a nice big "forbidden" symbol across the icon. 32-bit only.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Negative. I just downloaded it and it has a nice big "forbidden" symbol across the icon. 32-bit only.

Okay. So the OP can still use it if he is using Mojave or earlier, but not with any OS that is newer.

 

[solowyer]

Way back, I described the exec black box shown in the screen shot above. It shows for any file I select and try to open in Word. When I click on it, it shows the error message I quoted far above.

Thank you, Randy, for the flash drive offer.

I've developed a workaround that I should have recognized early on. I can open any of the files in TextEdit. I can then copy and paste the contents into a new Word .docx window and save with the original name.

Then I can change and enlarge the typeface. I can highlight and delete all the extraneous characters and save the resulting text. That will be much easier with some docs than others. Some have extraneous characters mixed in with the meaningful text. Some separate blocks of text from others, not in the original order. Some scatter the text throughout the window. Some stop in mid-sentence and contain nothing else.

By using this method, I can make sense of what's in the docs I can't open in Word. It's not a perfect solution, but it works for the most part.

Thanks everybody. Obviously, I'm not a techie. Computer hardware and software are pretty much foreign territory for me. They sure make research and writing easier.

Hi Ralph
No one has suggested Google Docs,
If you have a Google account just go to google.com sign in to your account, then open Google docs and drag and drop your challenging word files into the upload area. Right away the file opens and you can then export to Microsoft Word .docx to your downloads folder on your computer. Give it a try it is simple and easy to do.

 

[RalphClats]

A day or two back, I updated to Monterey 12.0.1

Gmail on my desktop won't let me access my account. It says "too many failed attempts." If there have been failed attempts, they haven't been by me. It then asks for my phone number so it can send me a code. I enter my number, but no code comes and the screen goes back to "too many failed attempts."

I found I can access the account on my laptop. Locking me out on my desktop but letting me in on my laptop makes no sense if Google's reason is security. Next time I break out my laptop, I'll try Google Docs.

Thank you.

 

[ferrarr]

Gmail on my desktop won't let me access my account.

How are you using gmail on your desktop? Is that a gmail app, or are you logging in to gmail online?

 

[RalphClats]

How are you using gmail on your desktop? Is that a gmail app, or are you logging in to gmail online?

I open Chrome. It gives me two tabs. One is Google News, the other is Gmail. I open Gmail but it won't let me log in, saying too many failed attempts. I think somebody else must have tried to log into my account multiple times and failed, hence the rejection. I can get in on my laptop, however.

When I dragged one of the Word docs into the thumbnail at Google Docs, I got the same error message I get when I try to open them in Word. When I enlarged the thumbnail and dragged the Word doc in, I got a similar message, something like 'format not supported.'

I'm OK with opening the docs in TextEdit, then copying and pasting to create new .docx docs. Most are pretty easy to decipher. When I come across any that are garbled, I'll do the best I can.