Hello all,

I'm having a strange issue with a couple of word files.


when i double click on them, nothing happens. when i right click, clicking open or edit, nothing happens. i cant copy them, i cant move them. (as administrator)

i can, however, open other word files in the folder. the weird thing is that these are files that a user on our network has created and have been edited recently. nobody can open them, and google is being less than helpful.

any suggestions on what might be causing this?

the user is having to recreate the files, so any help would be appreciated for either future reference, or to help this user out.

Hi Ookami
Have you tried opening them with Word Pad initially and then copying the contents into a new Word document and saving it with the same name (once you have closed the original of course).

You could also try opening a new Word document and using the insert file option to see if you can insert the contents of the file(s) you are having problems with.
Kind regards
Tony

Hi Tony, i can't open the file in anything, no programs can see it, and there isn't an "open with" option on the right-click menu.

Hi ookami,

Have you checked the file sizes - 0 bytes would indicate a corrupted file with no content. Has the user been editing the files on a USB stick, from which they've been copied? If so, and if the USB stick was removed unsafely, the files may be corrupt with no obvious evidence. Try changing the extension to .txt and checking whether there's anything in there.

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

I hadn't checked the file size, no, unfortunatley the file has been overwritten with the re-written file. the file wasn't on a USB drive though, nor had it been copied from one, it was just on our server.

In that case, it's no longer possible to diagnose the problem.

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