I have a Word document which I cannot open, and which cannot be opened by two other people on different computers. It was created in Word 2010, saved as Word 97-2003, emailed to a person with Word 2007, who made some editing suggestions using "Track Changes", saved it without changing the file type, and emailed it back to the creator. Now, nobody - including the person who did the "track changes" is able to open the document with the editing suggestions, and I'm trying to work out why.



The document was originally created on a Windows Vista machine, the editing was done on a Windows 2007 machine, and I have tried to trouble shoot on my own computer, which runs Windows 2010 64, with Office 2010. When I try to open the document by double clicking it, the Word Logo appears, saying "opening in protected view", but then nothing more happens. Word never opens completely. Word has not frozen, because clicking "cancel" closes it down. If I open Word first, and open the document from "file - open" the same thing happens - "opening in protected view" and then nothing.

I assumed that the document had been corrupted somehow, but the really wierd thing is that I am able to open it without any difficulty in Open Office 3, and the whole document is there, without any corruption. If I then save the file within Open Office as a .doc file, and a new name, Word is still unable to open the resulting file.

Can anyone help me work out what on earth is going on?

In Word, have you tried Open and Repair? In the Open dialog box (Ctrl+O), locate the problem file and select it. Then click the arrow on the Open button and choose Open and Repair.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately Word still stops responding, when I try the "Open and Repair" option.

Since posting this question, I have narrowed things down a bit. It seems that the problem is with the comments. If I open the document in Open Office, remove all the comments, and then save as a .doc file, Word can then open it. I have tried just leaving one randomly chosen comment, but even just one comment prevents Word from opening the file.