Saved properly but cannot open later
Saved properly but cannot open later
Last night I had saved a document in Microsoft Word 97-2003 format and I exited OpenOffice (version 4.1.4) properly. The PC (Windows 10) was then shut down properly. Everything looked normal. This morning I started my PC and tried to open the document but failed. OpenOffice responded with a pop-up message "read error, not WinWord97 file" (in Traditional Chinese, as per my Windows version). This is the second time such error occurred. Last time happened months ago and I just threw away that "corrupted" file as it's not that important. However, this time I want to recover this file as it has already taken me many days of work. I have tried to find any backup or temporary file (say in roaming data etc) but in vain. The file on the surface (such as size) looks good. I tried to attach here but failed as its size 166kb is too big for upload. Could anyone please advise me how to recover the file? Many thanks in advance!
Open Office 4.1.5
Window 10
Window 10
-
Hagar Delest
- Moderator
- Posts: 32657
- Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2007 9:07 pm
- Location: France
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
Hi and welcome to the forum!
If you use AOO, then save in its native format (ODF, that is .odt for text documents).
All other external formats may lead to such glitches. Especially MS Office formats that were not designed to be compatible with anything than MS Office.
So save your file in .odt and export in .doc when needed only.
For your file, try to find a machine with MS Office and try, or upload it on a 3rd party web site for file sharing.
If you use AOO, then save in its native format (ODF, that is .odt for text documents).
All other external formats may lead to such glitches. Especially MS Office formats that were not designed to be compatible with anything than MS Office.
So save your file in .odt and export in .doc when needed only.
For your file, try to find a machine with MS Office and try, or upload it on a 3rd party web site for file sharing.
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
-
Hagar Delest
- Moderator
- Posts: 32657
- Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2007 9:07 pm
- Location: France
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
Hi and welcome to the forum!
If you use AOO, then save in its native format (ODF, that is .odt for text documents).
All other external formats may lead to such glitches. Especially MS Office formats that were not designed to be compatible with anything than MS Office.
So save your file in .odt and export in .doc when needed only.
For your file, try to find a machine with MS Office and try, or upload it on a 3rd party web site for file sharing.
If you use AOO, then save in its native format (ODF, that is .odt for text documents).
All other external formats may lead to such glitches. Especially MS Office formats that were not designed to be compatible with anything than MS Office.
So save your file in .odt and export in .doc when needed only.
For your file, try to find a machine with MS Office and try, or upload it on a 3rd party web site for file sharing.
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15 on Xubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt.
Do not delay if you want to get back any temporary files by following [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files which gives:
a) detailed instructions on how to recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it, or as it was when it was last saved with AutoRecovery
b) how to find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located in, but which have since been deleted
c) how to un-delete the temporary files Writer wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. This will recover your file as it was when you last opened or you last saved it and is probably your best hope.
I have sent you a message with my email ID - send me the file. Or upload it to a fileshare site like mediafire or to Dropbox or Google Drive.
Also, if you search the forum with winword97 you will see similar posts.
Do not delay if you want to get back any temporary files by following [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files which gives:
a) detailed instructions on how to recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it, or as it was when it was last saved with AutoRecovery
b) how to find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located in, but which have since been deleted
c) how to un-delete the temporary files Writer wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. This will recover your file as it was when you last opened or you last saved it and is probably your best hope.
I have sent you a message with my email ID - send me the file. Or upload it to a fileshare site like mediafire or to Dropbox or Google Drive.
Also, if you search the forum with winword97 you will see similar posts.
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit
See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.
Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.
Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
I have this same issue. How can I send it to someone to look at and possibly open?
Open Office 4.0.1 on Windows 8
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
[Forum] How to attach a document here Note maximum file size is 128K. If your file is larger, use a file sharing site such as Mediafire. The link also contains information on how to anonymise your document if it contains confidential information.
Cheers
David
OS - Slackware 15 64 bit
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15
LibreOffice 24.2.2.2; SlackBuild for 24.2.2 by Eric Hameleers
David
OS - Slackware 15 64 bit
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15
LibreOffice 24.2.2.2; SlackBuild for 24.2.2 by Eric Hameleers
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
I had found a workaround by opening the corrupted file with another freeware 'Word Mobile'. Under 'Word Mobile', the file can be read but cannot be edited - a message shown says that I can edit the file by buying 'Office 365'. I opened a new file in OpenOffice and copied all the readable contents from 'Word Mobile'. The contents were all there but some format settings appeared to have changed, e.g. tab setting. Then I upgraded my OpenOffice to 4.1.5, with a hope that this bug had been fixed with the new release. However the same problem occurred even more frequently and applied to more than one file that I had saved. Furthermore, when I retrieved the bak version and renamed it to .doc, OpenOffice returned with the same error (i.e. read error, not WinWord97 file). That means the bug is with the save operation, which saves a file in a way that it is not retrievable. Hope this bug can be solved asap. Thanks.
Open Office 4.1.5
Window 10
Window 10
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
Stop saving as .doc file.
Always save as a .odt file and only create a .doc file as a copy of the master .odt file. See the tutorial referred to earlier.
Always save as a .odt file and only create a .doc file as a copy of the master .odt file. See the tutorial referred to earlier.
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit
See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.
Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.
Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
I have read [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files and have got a better understanding now. I guess why the recent captioned problems came up might be due to my header setting. Thank you all for the advice and assistance so far.
Open Office 4.1.5
Window 10
Window 10
-
The Viking
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:22 am
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
Amy,
I went to this site:
https://www.online-convert.com/
and converted my doc file to odt ... took about 15 seconds.
Like you, I had a 50 page document that I thought was just Open Office. I tried to open it after many successful saves and openings, then all of a sudden I got the same error message you got.
After converting the file, no more problems.
I went to this site:
https://www.online-convert.com/
and converted my doc file to odt ... took about 15 seconds.
Like you, I had a 50 page document that I thought was just Open Office. I tried to open it after many successful saves and openings, then all of a sudden I got the same error message you got.
After converting the file, no more problems.
OpenOffice 4.1.5 on Windows 7 Home Premium
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
Welcome to the forum.The Viking wrote:I tried to open it after many successful saves and openings, then all of a sudden I got the same error message you got.
Did you create the .doc file with AOO, and then always edit the .doc with AOO? Or did you receive a .doc file or did you ever use MS Word or other program to edit it? If you were always using AOO it means that AOO must have caused the error.
See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt.
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit
See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.
Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.
Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
-
The Viking
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:22 am
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
I use AOO for all my "Office" type files. The file that produced the "Read-Error. This is not a WinWord97 file" is the only file that produces the error. All other Writer and Calc files open as always with no error. The problem file is different in these ways -- it is large (about 50 pages in length) -- it contains many tables and links, and a few pictures. The file itself is a collection of Korea Olympic results and athletes.
I believe I saved the file as doc (as all other files I create). The file was edited and saved many times as the Olympics and results changed. I was able to open and edit the file with no problems.
The only other thing I can think of adding to this post is that I performed a Windows Update (I do this quite regularly, manually). After the Updates, I tried to open the file and was presented with the error message.
I tried to do a System Restore (with no success).
I went to the File Conversion site mentioned in an earlier post and converted the file to ODT. I was then able to open and edit the file.
I believe I saved the file as doc (as all other files I create). The file was edited and saved many times as the Olympics and results changed. I was able to open and edit the file with no problems.
The only other thing I can think of adding to this post is that I performed a Windows Update (I do this quite regularly, manually). After the Updates, I tried to open the file and was presented with the error message.
I tried to do a System Restore (with no success).
I went to the File Conversion site mentioned in an earlier post and converted the file to ODT. I was then able to open and edit the file.
OpenOffice 4.1.5 on Windows 7 Home Premium
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
Thank you. It looks therefore that, as you created the file as a .doc file with AOO, and always edited it with AOO and saved it as a .doc, it was AOO that caused the problem.
The problem arose during the time the file was being saved and, once the file is saved to disk, doing a Windows update or System Restore cannot affect it. If the PC hanged or crashed, or if AOO hanged or crashed, while the file was being saved, that could have caused the corruption. However, it is highly unlikely in your case because the corruption would have been much more severe. The corruption you experienced was sufficiently slight that the "error detection? error correction? error fix? ignore the error?" in the file conversion site was able to handle it. AOO was not.
See File > Properties. If a file has been edited many times it seems to get "tangled". It is then sensible to go File > New > Text document ..., and create a new, empty document. Now go Insert > From File ..., and pull in the heavily edited file. Save the new file. This seems to remove "tangles".
You are strongly advised to stop saving as .doc and always save as .odt. See the Tutorial for the many reasons why.
The problem arose during the time the file was being saved and, once the file is saved to disk, doing a Windows update or System Restore cannot affect it. If the PC hanged or crashed, or if AOO hanged or crashed, while the file was being saved, that could have caused the corruption. However, it is highly unlikely in your case because the corruption would have been much more severe. The corruption you experienced was sufficiently slight that the "error detection? error correction? error fix? ignore the error?" in the file conversion site was able to handle it. AOO was not.
See File > Properties. If a file has been edited many times it seems to get "tangled". It is then sensible to go File > New > Text document ..., and create a new, empty document. Now go Insert > From File ..., and pull in the heavily edited file. Save the new file. This seems to remove "tangles".
You are strongly advised to stop saving as .doc and always save as .odt. See the Tutorial for the many reasons why.
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit
See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.
Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.
Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
-
The Viking
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:22 am
Re: Saved properly but cannot open later
Hi John, Thanks for your reply and advice.
The main reason I always saved many other previous files as "doc" was to be compatible with other machines that actually used MS Office.
I understand the tangling issue as you explained it and am happy to have that knowledge -- thank you.
The save process was not interrupted, as you suggest. I have a bit of computer technical training and know NOT to interrupt those types of processes -- let sleeping dogs lie !!!
The file is up to 72 pages now, contains 83 tables (copied directly from Wiki), and 46 graphics. Yet, the file is only 88 Kb. That seems very low.
In the end, I still think that this problem file was due to the many pages the file is. I believe that's where the tangling occurred. AOO is a wonderful program and I'm happy to have it for free (as opposed to all the money I've spent on Bill Gates' Office program in the past.
The main reason I always saved many other previous files as "doc" was to be compatible with other machines that actually used MS Office.
I understand the tangling issue as you explained it and am happy to have that knowledge -- thank you.
The save process was not interrupted, as you suggest. I have a bit of computer technical training and know NOT to interrupt those types of processes -- let sleeping dogs lie !!!
The file is up to 72 pages now, contains 83 tables (copied directly from Wiki), and 46 graphics. Yet, the file is only 88 Kb. That seems very low.
In the end, I still think that this problem file was due to the many pages the file is. I believe that's where the tangling occurred. AOO is a wonderful program and I'm happy to have it for free (as opposed to all the money I've spent on Bill Gates' Office program in the past.
OpenOffice 4.1.5 on Windows 7 Home Premium