I spent hours formatting a book for a client today and my Word crashed. This happened before in the past and I can always just open the file right back up, losing only anything that wasn't saved.

This time I had saved it so I wasn't worried. I go to open it up and it no longer recognizes it as a Word doc. I get a box that pops up to "convert" the file, with options such as Rich Text, MS-DOS, Excel, etc. No matter what I pick, my document doesn't look right at all, it's just a long string of text.

Any ideas on what could be causing it to no longer recognize my file as a Word doc? It is still named with the extension .doc, I've re-named it, moved it to my desktop, etc. Nothing works. I've tried opening it on 2 other computers as well, one with a different (new) version of Word. None of them recognize it as a Word doc.

Any help would be IMMENSELY appreciated. I am a Mac OS X user, using Word 2004.

Thanks so much!!!