Problem opening a Word 2007 document

[someone]

I have spent many hours over two days on a Word document. Now when I try to open it, I get an error message telling me that Word cannot open it. It claims it cannot open it “because of problems with the contents”. Under details, it tells me it is an “unspecified error” and gives me a line and column number.

I have tried searching under help but get nothing useful.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[someone]

Since I have always gotten really helpful advice on terb’s technology forum, I thought I would try giving an update in the hope that a better defined problem would help someone give me advice.
A response to some else’s post on a Microsoft forum about a similar problem suggested trying Open Office. It said it was more lenient in opening such files with problems. I took the advice and downloaded Open Office. I was able to open the document with Open Office. However, of the 108 pages, most of the material was equations created with the equation editor. These are all screwed up. A couple of equations I had copied and pasted from documents created with the Microsoft equation editor in Word 2003 are not so bad. However, everything I created with the equation editor in Word 2007 are screwed up. Is there any way of getting Open Office to correctly present the equations created with the equation editor in Word 2007? Alternatively, is there another possible solution to my problem? I do not want to have to redo most of 108 page of material if I can help it.

The thing that gets me is that I only upgraded to Word 2007 in August and it was not until now that I even used the equation editor in Word 2007. Until now, I had just copied, pasted and modified equations created in the Microsoft equation editor 2003 and had no problems.

I am particularly hopeful that Danmand can help me as (1) in a previous thread I posted he indicated he used Open Office and (2) being an engineer, he would have experience with typing equations (Danmand, please don’t tell me I should have used Latex, everyone tells me that anyway).

In other threads, OTB has bragged about his superior technical skills when it come to this sort of thing. By all means OTB, step up and I will admit you are the better man when it comes to these technical issues. Anything to save retyping 108 pages of equations, etc.

the file is probably corrupt. try renaming to a .rtf file and opening it in wordpad. then copy it over to a new word document.

Thanks. However, I was not able to figure out how to change the file type to “.rtf” I can added “.rtf” to the file name, but it does not seem to change the file type to word. In old versions of Windows, I would have been able to change the docx extension to “.rts” but I cannot seem to figure out how to change the actual extension in this version of Windows. If you still think this would help and can tell me how to do this , I would be very grateful.

 

[someone]

Thanks very much for your help. Once I converted it to rtf, I resaved it as a Word file (I need that the Word format for compatibility reasons) and the new Word file seems to work fine now. You guys saved me hours of work. You guys made my day!

 

[someone]

It turned out I was wrong about the problem being fixed. The RTF conversion just removed all the equations done with Word’s new equation editor. I have tried all the options for converting it to different formats. In all cases, it is the same story. The conversions open the files but loses all the equations created in Word 2007. I am starting to retype them now. If anyone comes up with any other suggestions, I would appreciate it. There must be some format a Word 2007 document can be converted into without losing the equations. I hate Microsoft!

 

[SpaClient]

Check the XML

It turned out I was wrong about the problem being fixed. The RTF conversion just removed all the equations done with Word’s new equation editor. I have tried all the options for converting it to different formats. In all cases, it is the same story. The conversions open the files but loses all the equations created in Word 2007. I am starting to retype them now. If anyone comes up with any other suggestions, I would appreciate it. There must be some format a Word 2007 document can be converted into without losing the equations. I hate Microsoft!

If you are familiar with XML or XHTML you might have some hope. .docx files are just compressed XML files. So you can rename a copy of the original document with a .zip extension. Then open the zip file and hunt for a folder called "word". You should find an xml document within that folder called document.xml. Try to open it with IE. If it does not open in IE then there is a problem with the nesting of the xml tags. You can use an txt editor, or Dreamweaver (much better)to hunt for the missing/mismatched tag that needs to be fixed. If IE opens the document.xml file, then check some of the others to see if they will open. The one that will not open is the file that's causing the problem. Be warned - this may take more time than retyping your equations and it is possible that the problem lies with the tag contents rather than the nesting. You would need to use a schema validator (much more involved) to track down that problem.

 

[dknight0147]

Word blows !!

please don’t tell me I should have used Latex, everyone tells me that anyway).

Ok..I'll say it...you should have used latex !!

 

[BillyBobBobbybob]

Sounds like your equation editor is corrupt, or your office is corrupt.
If you creat a normal word document dose it still behave this way, or only when you insert equations?

I suggest a re install of office along with the plug in for equations.

 

[WoodPeckr]

Ok..I'll say it...you should have used latex !!

Latex Rocks!....

 

[someone]

If you are familiar with XML or XHTML you might have some hope. .docx files are just compressed XML files. So you can rename a copy of the original document with a .zip extension. Then open the zip file and hunt for a folder called "word". You should find an xml document within that folder called document.xml. Try to open it with IE. If it does not open in IE then there is a problem with the nesting of the xml tags. You can use an txt editor, or Dreamweaver (much better)to hunt for the missing/mismatched tag that needs to be fixed. If IE opens the document.xml file, then check some of the others to see if they will open. The one that will not open is the file that's causing the problem. Be warned - this may take more time than retyping your equations and it is possible that the problem lies with the tag contents rather than the nesting. You would need to use a schema validator (much more involved) to track down that problem.

Thanks very much for your help. When I do that I get a bunch of sub directories/folders. Unless I missed one, only the following files give me problems opening. They are under Word/embeddings and are named

OleObject1, OleObject2, OleObject3, OleObject4, OleObject5, OleObject6

First I get the warning that these are .bin files and that editing them could damage my system. When I tell it to open the files anyway, it says I need the program that created it and gives me a couple of options like searching the web for it. I am not sure if this qualifies as “The one that will not open is the file that's causing the problem.” Or if it will open but just not without the right program. In the document.xml, you spoke of (under the directory Word/_rels), there is are a few lines that refer to the oleObject files such as

<Relationship Id="rId7" Type="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships/oleObject" Target="embeddings/oleObject1.bin" />

I assume if I delete these lines, it will ignore these files, but I am uncertain I should try this.
Unless I missed something, everything else seemed open fine.

I have some other work to do in the mean time so I may leave this for a few days in case anyone else has any advice. After that I will just start retyping things.

 

[Cassini]

From what you describe, the embedded binary objects are likely your formulas.

I would try opening the document in Open Office. If that doesn't work, you could delete the lines, however you might find that your formulas disappear too.

You really need to avoid using Word with formulas. Admittedly, I haven't used 2007 very much, but the previous versions where awful because they corrupted documents when the graphics and formula usage became complex.

Latex is the way to go for a mathematics paper containing formulas.

 

[someone]

From what you describe, the embedded binary objects are likely your formulas.

I would try opening the document in Open Office. If that doesn't work, you could delete the lines, however you might find that your formulas disappear too.

You really need to avoid using Word with formulas. Admittedly, I haven't used 2007 very much, but the previous versions where awful because they corrupted documents when the graphics and formula usage became complex.

Latex is the way to go for a mathematics paper containing formulas.

Thanks for the advice. The document does open in Open Office. However, as I mentioned above the equations created in Word 2007 get screwed up in Open Office. However, unlike the other conversions, they don’t completely disappear in Open Office so I have some idea of what they were. Hopefully, that will make retyping them easier. I have a feeling that is the best outcome I am going to get.

Up until now, I have never had a problem of files getting corrupted in Word. The main reason I use it is for compatibility reasons. It is true that with PDF that is not much of an issue anymore but if students want to edit the document with their own notes during class, Word still have an advantage over PDF. They would revote at Latex.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestions.

 

[WoodPeckr]

Came across this thread and tought of passing it on

I only had used LaTex on Windows Vista. I don't know how to do it on ubuntu.

Ubuntu uses the Texlive distribution of latex.

Installing kile will install its dependencies, which is about 250 MB of latex packages.

It will also install its kde/qt dependencies as well, so if you dont use any other qt applications, then you might just want to install "texlive" which should install what you need to compile latex documents, and use another ide.

I personally use kile, but
gedit highlights latex, as does vim I think. If you use a text editor that does not have integrated latex buttons like kile does, you will need to run latex from the command line.

You can give TexMaker a try. It's a very nice program with highlighting and you can compile to pdf etc with a press on the button.

More information:
http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/

I have used Lyx and like it a lot. I have not used Latex but it installs very easily under synaptic and runs very smoothly under XUbuntu 9.10.