Unable To Open Word 2003 Doc

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This is making me crazy.

Each night each of our locations sends a Word 2003 document to an external business partner. This entity reported to me today that they can open the Word doc’s from all but one of the locations. For the site that they can not open the Word doc, the entity informed me that “we have to save on our computer, change the name and open with a different program than Microsoft word“.

I have asked the business partner multiple questions but only begrudgingly do they respond with answers. I asked them to check the documents security, if they were changing the full document name or just the extension, what version Word they are running, and what app they used to open the doc. When I asked what program they were using to read the document I was told that their IT department was using WordPad to read the file.

I had a test file sent from multiple computers from the suspect location to both myself (at a different site) and to the external partner (several states away). I can open the test files with no problem yet the partner reports that they can only open using WP.

I sent the test file to a friend at a different company and she was able to open the Word document with no problems.

Any ideas, suggestions, comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Brent

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Is the message plain text? Do you know what email client they use?

I realize you don’t have complete information, or you probably would have mentioned whether they get a specific error message from Word, or whether they double-click and nothing happens at all.

(If the document has the same name every day, maybe… there is an active thread right now about the Outlook cache blocking an image after 100 copies of the same-named JPG files acdumulated.)

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The Word documents have a Corp logo image and multiple tables *screeech* —

(If the document has the same name every day, maybe… there is an active thread right now about the Outlook cache blocking an image after 100 copies of the same-named JPG files acdumulated.)

I wonder if the logo is causing the issue. I have asked the location to send the Word .doc file sans logo to see if the external partner can open the file. I also saved the file with and without the logo in rich text format and have asked them to send those off also and I requested info on what email client they are using.

I will post the results when I hear back from my users.

Thanks jscher2000.

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the entity informed me that “we have to save on our computer, change the name and open with a different program than Microsoft word“.

You mentioned they have to change the name. Why is this a necessary step? What is it about the name that must be changed?

Perhaps this is a file association problem with the document suffix.

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You mentioned they have to change the name. Why is this a necessary step? What is it about the name that must be changed?

Perhaps this is a file association problem with the document suffix.

It could also possibly a long path/long file name issue. It probably isn’t, but it could be!

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By any chance is there a version difference between the offices – i.e., your office is Word 2007 and the receiving office is Word 2003? If so, you may need them to install the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack.

Another troubleshooting item… the file maybe on its way to corruption (many tables – as you mentioned eeeechh)… Open Word with NO document. Choose File, Open and navigate to the file (ensure it is on a network drive/local machine). Select the file and then choose the drop-down with the Open command and select Open and Repair. If Microsoft attempts to repair the file, I would suggest it be reformatted from scratch… there is probably a corrupt table somewhere (and that is very hard to diagnose in Word). Try copying all text, EXCEPT the last paragraph marker, to a new blank document first. Save and try the Open and Repair again… if still repairing, recreate the document (this will suck!)

Hope this helped…

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Sounds like an over-active AV messing up somwhere. Make sure that they are saving the document to their local HDD before they try to open the attachment.

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