Word 2000 - "Encoding" prompt when reading .txt file

[AndrewMozley]

I have an old application which produces reports as .txt files which I then wish to read using WORD.

The command which I use is winword myfile.txt

With Word 2003 and Word 2007 this works fine. However I have some users who are running Word 2000. In their case, as soon as WORD fires up it shows a dialogue window inviting the user to select what encoding he wishes to use - a long list, including Ukrainian and no doubt lots of other languages. It also shows a thumbnail sketch of the text itself. The user can then select the encoding and he is in business.

I would like to omit this dialogue (Word 2003 and Word 2007 seem quite happy to choose a reasonable default).

How can I do that? Is there an option on the command line, or possibly a set-up option.

The problem does not always occur even with Word 2000. With some text files - possibly longer files - although I cannot really detect a pattern - Word seems happy to go ahead without invoking its dialog box.

Thanks. Andrew

 

[macropod]

Hi Andrew,

The problem is most likely caused by one or more of the first few characters in the file. You might try running Word with the /safe or /a switch to see if that makes any difference,

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[MS MVP - Word]

 

[AndrewMozley]

Thanks, Paul.

You have put me on the right track.

In fact after further investigation, what Word 2000 gets confused by is the sterling £ sign in the text - whether at the start of the document or anywhere in the text. If I remove these occurrences then Winword 2000 opens without prompting me.

I have tried the /A and /safe options but I get no joy.

I suppose I could parse the text in my original application and substitute some other character, but that might be confusing . . .