NEED MS WORD HELP - cannot open my basic reference doc file. (Office 2000)

Factual Questions
1

Okay, here’s the sequence of events:

-I keep an actively open MS Word file (notes.doc) in 2000 format where (guess what I do?) I take notes from neat stuff I see on the internet. (It is a lot easier than making a new bookmark, because usually I only want two or three lines from a webpage; I don’t need the whole page.) This file is approx. 50+ pages long.

-My friend emails me three word documents for a project we’re working on, but they’re in *.docx format (isn’t that 2007 format?)

-I can’t open any of the three because I have the older format.

-I email her and ask her to re-save these files in 2000 format and resend. She does. I can now open all three.

-Out of the blue, a Shockwave pop-up tells me to update their flash application. I ignore this msg, and it reoccurs every day for three days. Finally I update it. I trust the site, and figure they’re really pushing something like a security upgrade or some such, so I upgrade just to shut them up. (For the record, I’m not usually the one who jumps on the first upgrade - iTunes keeps asking me to upgrade about twice a week, but I won’t do it, because, well, they’re Apple.)

-Now I had to reinstall my sound card and monkey with all the settings because (I think) the Shockwave upgrade messed it up somehow and my keyboard functions won’t work (internet link, volume control, page up/dn, simple stuff like that). I did manage to fix all that. I update Spybot and download the latest threats. Nada. I run my antivirus software and run a complete system viruscan. It comes clean. No problems there.

ANYWAY: Now I can’t open the notes.doc file. All my other bazillion word (and Excel and Powerpoint) files are okay and work fine. It’s just this one file I can’t make work. It doesn’t say why, but only asks if I want to send MS an error report or not. Details of what the error report don’t say what the specific error is. I’ve sent several error reports. Nada news from MS.

I’ve asked my computer geek friend, Ed. He has no clue. I’ve contacted MS help online, but they haven’t contacted me back. All I get from them is their typical “try this option to see if it works; if not, go back and try something else” option tree.
I’d rather not call them, because if it’s anything like last time I did that, that’s going to mean at least 2 hours on the phone just ID’ing my hardware.

BTW: This happened Sunday, April 17th. So it’s not like I haven’t tried to work on this myself. Then again, I was out all last week (Mon-Fri, literally) because I caught a cold. And it hit me HARD. So I didn’t work on it much this week. I finally got all the fixes done today, and this is where I’m at.
I tried the MS system restore three times (option to restore system to last known working configuration), but it never made any changes, and each time it didn’t fix anything. I draw the line at using my HP system restore disks, because that takes like three hours, and except for the notes.doc file, everything works just fine. I figure the 2nd to last option is reinstall MS Office, but that won’t affect this file. And like I said, everything else is okie-dokie, fine as wine. The last option is FORMAT C:\ but that’s a big pain in the ass. And it still won’t fix this file.
NOTE: I only have typical operating system info on my C:\ drive (40 GB capacity). I keep many programs on my external USB 40 GB drive, but all the jpg/doc/xls/whatever files I keep on my external 1TB USB drive. (I love it! A terabyte drive!) So doing anything to c:\ probably won’t fix this.

Also, I cannot simply move the file. It won’t let me copy/paste or move the file to another drive. It’s just stuck. (The notes.doc is on the TB drive.) It won’t let me attach it as an email file. It won’t let me put it on my USB stick. It won’t let me attach it to an email I could send myself. I can’t use the “save as” option because it won’t let me open it in the first place.

I totally have no clue.:smack::confused::mad::mad:
SO: Has anybody else experienced this problem, or am I just going to have to eat the loss? I would rather not. As I mentioned, my friend and I are working on a pretty big project and this is my contribution to the whole deal. I don’t want to be the guy who drops the ball, because it’s just the two of us.
Note to mods: I wanted to put this in MPSIMS, but also thought about the Pit (because I blame MicroSoft), but I figure I’d get some real answers here. Feel free to do what you will.

2

What happens when you try to copy it?

Have you tried copying the file in Windows’s Safe Mode?

Can you connect your drive to another computer?

3

When you have files that you can’t open, delete or move, it’s a good time to run chkdsk.

4

1/ It usually goes into hourglass mode and sits for five min. (that’s my time limit for puter probs). I then hit cancel and try something else.

2/ Nope. Are you saying I have to reboot in Safe mode and then … do what?

3/ I haven’t tried that yet. But my roomie hogs the other puter. I guess I could try it and fire up the laptop.

Thanks.

Good idea. Didn’t think of that. I’ll do that right now. It usually takes a while, though. Enough time for the hockey game to end.

I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for the ideas.

5

If you try the safe mode thing, just try copying it into another file or another drive. Or try opening it in Word in safe mode. Or try emailing it to yourself, or uploading it to Google, or anything… just see if the file works differently in safe mode.

6

Okay, results…

chkdsk didn’t work. All three scans go. BUT IMPORTANT> Right up front, it says “WARNING: F parameter not specified”.

And then the DOS window closes. I tried to reopen it, but it won’t let me without going right back into chkdsk again. A search on my drives achieves zero results for dos.exe file. I believe I need to run a chkdsk/f switch or something like that, but I don’t remember the exact command.

I miss DOS. I used to know all the codes, but that was freakin’ 20 years ago. Man I’m getting old.

So, I’m still at square one.

7

Oops. F parameter means that my TB drive (where the file I want is located) is designated as my F drive. I just don’t remember the switch. Or the command line.

8

Start -> Run -> cmd.exe

chkdsk f: /f

F Parameter ( /f ) means it’ll fix any errors that it finds.

9

Did you try the other methods I listed?

10

I had the same problem with one specific word file a few years ago. I found that even though it wouldn’t open in Microsoft Word, OpenOffice opened it just fine.

I then re-saved it in .doc format and it was business as usual. Might be worth a shot.

11

That was my thought. Try opening it using a different program. Notepad, Wordpad, Open Office… hell, try Excel if you have it.

12

I have had that work several times for different workmates with various Word and Excel files.

13

chkdsk won’t run on the main drive, but will just display a message that it will run at next boot. Unlike Scandisk, chkdsk cannot run on an active Windows drive.

14

Oops! Sorry, everybody. It’s been quite a crazy week over here and I didn’t get a chance to update.

I finally fixed it. I was able to open the file with wordpad, but I had to dig around and find my original MS office CDRom because something needed a translation file to convert the format, but that took slogging through about 15 error messages. I actually did it by luck, as I was working on something else at the time and just kept hitting enter. Now I’ve got all my data back, and the project can continue. (Well, after I finish saving all the formatting. I have the text but the translation process removed all formatting tags.)
Thanks for all the help, everybody! I knew I could count on you guys!

15

Now that you have it back, upload it to google docs so you’ll always have a backup in the cloud.