WD98: Troubleshooting Corrupt Documents in Word 98 For Macintosh

• Microsoft Word 98 Macintosh Edition

SUMMARY

This article provides troubleshooting procedures you can use to identify, recover, or prevent corruption of Microsoft Word for the Macintosh documents.

Corrupted document files can cause any program to exhibit unusual behavior. Such behavior occurs because the program attempts to make decisions about what to do next based on incorrect information in the corrupted document.

MORE INFORMATION

Identifying a Corrupted Document

Corrupted documents often exhibit behavior that is not part of the program's design (for example, infinite repagination, incorrect document layout and formatting, unreadable characters on the screen, error messages during processing, system hangs or crashes when you load or view the file, or any other unusual behavior that cannot be attributed to the normal operation of the program). These behaviors can be caused by factors other than document corruption. To rule out other factors, use the following troubleshooting steps:

• Check for similar behavior in other documents.
• Check for similar behavior in other programs.
• Take the file in question to another computer and attempt to duplicate the behavior.
• Use a different printer driver and attempt to duplicate the behavior.
• Rename any templates attached to the document and attempt to duplicate the behavior.
• Start the computer again with extensions off to disable any third-party programs that are running (such as terminate-and-stay-resident programs [TSRs], font managers, and screen savers), and then attempt to duplicate the behavior.

CORRECTING A CORRUPTED DOCUMENT

There are several techniques you can use to try to correct a corrupted document. Which method you use depends on the nature and severity of the corruption and the nature of the behavior exhibited. Although many of these methods succeed regularly, not every corrupted document can be recovered. Keeping a backup copy of a document is the best way to ensure its recovery.

Convert the File to Another Format

Convert the file to another format, and then convert it back to its native format.

This is the easiest and most complete document recovery method; always try it first. Save the file in Rich Text Format (RTF) file format; this format preserves the formatting in your Microsoft Word for the Macintosh document. After you save the file in RTF format, reopen the document in Word, and convert it from RTF. If this method succeeds, the file corruption is removed during conversion.

To save the file as RTF, follow these steps:

1. On the File menu, click Save As.

2. In the Save File As Type area, select Rich Text Format

   Other word processing formats
   Text Only

Using the AutoRecover Feature in Word

The AutoRecover feature in Word will attempt to automatically recover text from a document that was open when Word stopped responding. When you restart Word after it stops responding (hangs), a dialog box will be displayed with the following message:

   Word encountered file corruption while opening <FILE NAME>. Part of this
   document may be recoverable. Attempt Recovery Now?

After the document has been recovered, immediately use the Save As command on the File menu to save the document with a new file name. This will insure that the original document will be available for other recovery attempts. This automatic recovery method strips all formatting, graphics, and objects from the document. Other methods, listed below, may allow you to recover more of your original formatting and so on from the damaged document.

For more information about the AutoRecover feature, see the "Prevent loss of Word and Recover Lost Documents" topic in Word Help.

Open the Damaged Word Document in Draft Mode

Open the damaged Word document in draft mode. Sometimes (not always, due to the nature of damaged documents) you can open a document successfully in draft mode when it will not open in other views. Once you open the file, you may be able to recover or repair the file.

To switch to draft mode in Word, follow these steps:

1. On the View menu, click Normal.

2. On the Tools menu, click Preferences

3. Click the View tab

4. Click to select the Draft Font option.

Copy Everything Except the Last Paragraph Mark to a New Document

Word associates a wide variety of formatting with the last paragraph mark, especially section and style formatting. If you copy everything except the last paragraph mark to a new document, the corruption may be left behind in the original document. In the new document, reapply the section or style formatting.

NOTE: You can select everything except the last paragraph mark by pressing COMMAND+END, and then COMMAND+SHIFT+HOME.

Copy the Uncorrupted Portions of the Document to a New Document

Sometimes you can determine the location of file corruption in your document. In this case, copy everything except the corrupted portion to a new file, and follow these steps to reconstruct your document:

1. Copy the uncorrupted portions of your document and paste them into a new file (you may not want to select the final paragraph mark of this selection because that paragraph mark may hold some incorrect information).

2. Save a copy of the corrupted document in Text-Only format.

3. Open the Text-Only file.

4. Copy the text from this file and paste it into the file that contains the uncorrupted portion of your document.

5. Reformat the sections of the document you pasted in step 4, and then save the recovered document.

Insert the File into a Blank Document

If you cannot open a file to copy all text except the final paragraph mark, you may be able to insert the file into a new document (which will give a new final paragraph mark to the file you are correcting). To do this, follow these steps:

1. Create a New Document based on the Normal template.

2. On the Insert menu, click File. Select the corrupted document and Click OK.

Open The File Using Recover Text From Any File

As a last resort, this special converter can be used to manually open corrupt documents. Using this converter removes all formatting, graphics, and embedded objects from the file. It strips everything from the file except readable text (ASCII characters). Because of the way Word document files are organized and saved, the text may be disjointed and or duplicated. With even the simplest files there will be lots of reformatting required. With smaller files it is often desirable to open a new second document and copy and paste text from the recovered document to the new document because there is so much unwanted text recovered.

To use the "Recover Text From Any File" converter to open a document:

1. On the File menu click open.

2. On the "List files of Type" drop down list and select "Recover Text from Any File".

3. Navigate to the folder that holds the corrupt file and select it.

4. Click open.

   NOTE: The recovery process may take some time depending on the size of the document and the type of corruption. As soon as the recovery is complete, on the file menu click open and change "List Files Of Type" back to Word Documents or Readable Files.

   TIP: Save the recovered file with a new name at this point, this will keep you from accidentally overwriting the original document, and insure that the original document will still be available for other recovery attempts.

REFERENCES

For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q145390
   TITLE     : Troubleshooting Corrupted Documents in Word for the
               Macintosh

   ARTICLE-ID: Q87856
   TITLE     : WD: Troubleshooting Damaged Documents in Word for Windows