[skypilotpete]

I have a Word document which I cannot open, and which cannot be opened by two other people on different computers. It was created in Word 2010, saved as Word 97-2003, emailed to a person with Word 2007, who made some editing suggestions using "Track Changes", saved it without changing the file type, and emailed it back to the creator. Now, nobody - including the person who did the "track changes" is able to open the document with the editing suggestions, and I'm trying to work out why.

The document was originally created on a Windows Vista machine, the editing was done on a Windows 2007 machine, and I have tried to trouble shoot on my own computer, which runs Windows 2010 64, with Office 2010. When I try to open the document by double clicking it, the Word Logo appears, saying "opening in protected view", but then nothing more happens. Word never opens completely. Word has not frozen, because clicking "cancel" closes it down. If I open Word first, and open the document from "file - open" the same thing happens - "opening in protected view" and then nothing.

I assumed that the document had been corrupted somehow, but the really wierd thing is that Outlook 2010 is able to preview the entire file, and I am able to open it without any difficulty in Open Office 3. The the whole document is there, without any corruption. If I then save the file within Open Office as a .doc file, and a new name, Word is still unable to open the resulting file.

Can anyone help me work out what on earth is going on?

Edited by skypilotpete, 20 October 2011 - 08:59 PM.

[Advertisements]

Sounds like there's something in the file content that Word doesn't like... e.g. a non-printable character. I've got a similar problem with Visio at the moment. Why not try opening the document in Open Office, copy/paste the content into a new Word document and save that. See if the new Word document then opens.

[Vino Rosso]

Sounds like there's something in the file content that Word doesn't like... e.g. a non-printable character. I've got a similar problem with Visio at the moment. Why not try opening the document in Open Office, copy/paste the content into a new Word document and save that. See if the new Word document then opens.

[skypilotpete]

I tried your suggestion, and Word can open the document created by copying and pasting from Open Office. However, copying and pasting from Open Office does not capture the "track changes" and comments within the original document - and these are really essential. Presumably this means that the problem is somewhere in the "track changes".

I have played around a bit more, and it seems that the problem is in the comments. I found this by deleting all comments and leaving the track changes. After I saved the document, Word could then open it. However, if I got rid of all the "track changes", but left the comments, Word could not open the saved document.

However, I'm still no closer to finding why the comments are causing a problem.

[Vino Rosso]

However, I'm still no closer to finding why the comments are causing a problem.

Is it any comment in particular or does the problem still remain no matter which comment is left?

[skypilotpete]

It seems to be any comment. I have tried deleting all comments except for one randomly chosen comment. I have done this several times, each time leaving just one different comment. Word freezes trying to open all of the resulting documents. As soon as I delete all of them, Word has no difficulty opening the document.

[Vino Rosso]

Could be one for MS to solve!