Word 2000 will not open old (Word 97) documents

[jparkhill]

Running Win 98SE, I upgraded from Office 97 to Office 2000 and Word 2000 cannot open my existing documents.

When attempting to open a document, the dialog box that appears wants to convert from "Text Files" (which are basically garbage.) I see other users with this same issue from time to time, with questions about not being able to convert docs, but no answers to this problem have been submitted.

Let me state I can open _some_ documents, but not all. What must be done to convert my files so they can be read by Office2000/Word2000?

Thanks,

Jan

 

[mdav2]

We use word 97 and word 200 in the organisation where I work. The standard document type is word 97 to enable all users to read documents. We have never had any problems with documents.

Going back a few years we had to convert word 2 to word 97 and it wouldn't work without converting word 2 to word 6, then word 6 to word 97. Have you checked that it is saved as a word 97 file. It may be saved as a rtf, or previous version.

 

[Rythemton]

There should be no problems opening Word 97 files on Word 2000 because they use the same file format. Word 97 opens Word 2000 files without a converter because they are the same file format.

You might want to check for other reasons the files are not opening correctly. If it's trying to convert from Unicode 8, then it may be damage caused by the Klez virus.

Steve

PS. Word 98 for the Mac, Word 2001 for the Mac, and Word 2002 also have the same file format as Word 2000 and Word 97 and require no converter to open each other's files.