So shortly after this is when people started telling me about the problems with other files. I cannot find any rhyme or reason for the problem. The only common thing is that it is a hit and miss scenario and the error from Word states that the file cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents. Excel files say cannot open the files because the file format or file extension is not valid - Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file. There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with these file...in other words...icon seems fine, file size is not "0", etc. Machines are on a Windows network Server 2008 STD R2 with network shares. It seems to only be "some" Word and Excel files. These files were OK yesterday...as a matter of fact - my only solution at this point is to run virus scans (all local..Windows Security Essentials) and restore the files one by one (or directories) from previous night's backup.
I could turn the other way and forget about it....but I am leary to do so since I really don't know what caused it and why it wasn't more of the files. Problem is across any computer on the network so I can't believe that it is a corruption inside of Office on all of these machines. I have tried changing the file extensions, opening the Html file, copied the contents of the sheet to another new file. I have even tried some word and excel file recovery software but these simply say that the files are pretty much dead.
Any recommendations would be appreciated.