TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
> If you can't recover the documents then you might be able to save pieces
of
> them. If you can still open the documents, there is a delightful little
> "corruption character" that inserts itself into Word. It looks like a
little
> letter "y" with two dots on top of it.
> I have determined only that they MAY be due to making multiple formatting
> steps between saves (i.e. create a column, then a table, then insert a
> graphic, then undo or delete something).
What I heard some time ago, was that these "y" characters contained the
'Undo' information of the previous paragraph. For some reason (due to
multiple Undos or God knows what) Word kept all the Undo information for
that paragraph in that character. This can mean that one single (hidden)
character can hold several pages worth of information. Needless to say,
this can cause major problems.
Corruption of Word-files mostly occurs when Word finds itself in a
repetitive loop. Clearing of all formatting (saving it as a text file) is a
sure method of getting rid of the problem. It is however a little bit
crude: like killing off all your life stock because one of your cows fell
ill with a virus.
Therefore tracing the problem the way Paulette described is more elegant,
if you have the time and endurance. If only Word had the wonderfull
WordPerfect 'under water window' that showed all coding and styles, that
would save us all so much time and energy.
Lots of luck
Jeroen Hendrix
PolyDoc
the Netherlands
Mail to jhe -at- polydoc -dot- com
Web: www.polydoc.com
