I have a 1 WORD file of about 1.2 GB. It doesn't open - I get an error message that 512 MB is the limit. Is there ANY way I can open the file using WORD, or anyway that I can partition the WORD file into smaller files?? Or any other way? I downloaded OpenOffice hoping that would work but it won't open a file this big. I have some charts within which are JPG images (accounting for the size) that it will be very difficult to lose!

Yes, 512Mb is the limit. To have created a 1.2Gb file, you must have many large graphics, etc. in there.

You will be able to open the file again if you delete enough of those graphics, etc. to get the file size below 512Mb. Here's how:
• change the file extension to .zip, to turn it into a zip archive (which is all docx/docm files are, anyway);
• open the resulting zip archive; and
• start selecting the largest images. They'll have names like image1.jpg, image2.jpg, etc. Similarly, embedded Excel workbooks will have names like Microsoft_Office_Excel_2007_Workbook1.xlsx, etc.
• once you've selected enough of these objects to get the document below 512Mb, delete them from the zip archive
• change the file extension back to .docx or docm, as appropriate.
You will now be able to open the file.
Wherever possible, you should replace your graphics with lower-res copies that have no more than 300dpi resolution at the size they will be printed in the document. You will probably need to do this for images that weren't deleted, as well as for any you re-insert/add, to keep the file size below 512Mb. If you let Word compress your embedded graphics (by unchecking the 'do not compres images in file' option, under File|Options|Advanced>image Size and Quality), it will reduce them to 220dpi (or lower, if you tell it to).

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Would linking instead of inserting large graphics help, perhaps?

Linking can certainly make a big difference. The potential downside is that the images will only be available in the document on the PC on which the linking is done. That can be worked around, either by linking and embedding and/or by editing the INCLUDEPICTURE fields to use relative paths. The latter is quite fiddly to set up on docx files, though.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I've never understood the benefit of linking + embedding. Does this give the benefit of being able to update the source without relinking, but include a local copy so you don't reduce the file-size of the Word document?

The main benefit is that the last version of the image remains in the document if the link fails to find it. I'm not sure on how much the file size with linking & embedding differs between embedding on the one hand and linking on the other. I imagine it'll be larger than if you just link the image, but hopefully it could be significantly smaller than embedding the images if they're oversized.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]