[cpn]

Sometime during the last month or two (I believe since a recent update), MS Word documents are becoming corrupt, and I get this message (a friend of mine is having the same problem):

"Word cannot open this document. The Document might be in use or might not be a valid Word document. (document name)"

I cannot make a copy of these documents, attach them to email messages, or see them in Time Machine (until I go back far enough to get an uncorrupted document).

I have tried opening by clicking on the file, through the program (using "open" command), and by using MS Word's "Recover text from any file." I've also tried opening them with other programs (TextEdit, TextWrangler, Mellel).

I'm using
MS Word 12.2.8 (with the latest update)
MacBook Pro OS 10.6.5 (2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)

I have two questions: 1) How do I recover these files? and 2) How do I prevent this from happening?

[Spheric Harlot]

Try NeoOffice (free from NeoOffice.org).

Don't use Word 2011. I thought a recent update fixed the corruption bug, but apparently, the piece of shit still needs to get thrown on the dung heap. I no longer bother trying.

[cpn]

Yes, I'm aware of NeoOffice. Right now, I'm using Mellel. Not free, but I've had it for a long time, and it's great for different language scripts. Even so, I want to repair the documents that have been corrupted and prevent others from occurring. Most of the people I work with use MS Office as it's provided free at my institution.

[Spheric Harlot]

Try NeoOffice for recovering your documents.

[cpn]

I tried NeoOffice and got this error message: "General input/output error while accessing ...."

[ibook_steve]

If you can, try opening with Pages.

But this may be a sign of a bigger problem, like a hard drive issue. What do you mean by "I cannot...attach them to email messages?"

Steve

[cpn]

I don't have Pages. When I want to email a file to someone, I attach it to an email message.

On it being a hard drive issue, a friend of mine is having the same problem (and his Mac has Intel Core Duo, too) and we both think it started happening at the same time, either during the last MS Word update or the one before it.

[cpn]

On second thought, ibook_steve, you might be right. Disk Utility says I need to repair the disk. My installation disk is elsewhere, but once I get that done, we'll see if this problem reoccurs.

[ibook_steve]

Originally Posted by cpn 

I don't have Pages. When I want to email a file to someone, I attach it to an email message.

You said in the original message that you cannot attach them to an email. Was that a typo?

Steve

[cpn]

For me, attaching something to an email means the same as to an email message. Is that different for you?

[ibook_steve]

Originally Posted by cpn 

For me, attaching something to an email means the same as to an email message. Is that different for you?

Huh?

That's not the point. The question is: are you able to attach these files to an email [message] you can send out? In other words, when you try to attach the file, do you get an error that says something like "cannot attach file to email"? Your original post implies that this is what is happening.

Steve

[cpn]

Oh, okay. When I try to attach a corrupted document, I get this message: "Attachment failed. This may be due to a proxy or firewall."