Ascii Filter Options error

[mouse2562]

I have a .doc file in OpenOffice Writer that is no longer opening correctly. When I try to open the file, I get a "Ascii Filter Options" pop-up. The options on the pop-up are character set, language, and font. If I press "cancel", it won't let me open the document. If I press "Okay", then regardless of what options I choose, the document shows up as ###########. 18 pages of ###########.

I do notice that although it says it is a .doc, whenever I try to save it as something else, it defaults to .txt.

I searched the forum, but didn't find anything useful.
From Googling, this seems like a fairly common problem, but I haven't found any good solutions. I found a couple of places that said to change the extension from .doc to .odt. I can't figure out how to do that from outside of the file (or even if I can), and when I open the file and then "save as.." with a different extension, it just saves the #########s.

I would really appreciate any help anyone can give me. I'm going to attach the file, in case that would be helpful.

[Hagar Delest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Sadly, nothing to do: 22 page term paper replaced with pound signs.

Check the temporary folder of the system (see in OOo Tools>Options>OOo>Paths). If there are folders like sgmlf.tmp with a file having the same name inside, make a copy of that file, rename it in .odt and cross your fingers.

Else, nothing to do I fear.

[dplind]

If there is no way of fixing this random problem, is there at least some measures that we could take in order to avoid it in the first place?

I am currently using a 2go laptop with windows 7 pro. I have noticed that when I close the lid (putting it into sleep mode) while I have an openoffice document opened, there seems to be a higher chance of having the document open the next time as (read only) -- and I believe that this is what happened when the term paper that I was working on opened through the ASCII filter options.

So, is there at least some way of avoiding this happening in the future?

[RoryOF]

Yes. Save your document and close it. Do not allow your computer to sleep with it open. If your document matters to you, you will alter your way of working.