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Uma has <<...a Word 97 document that displays an error message before
opening. The message says that the file might be corrupt and recommends that
I cut and paste the contents into a new file. I tried this but the error
message still
comes up.>>
Two thoughts. First, corruption often gets stored in the final paragraph
marker (the backwards P you'll see at the end of each paragraph if you set
your viewing options to reveal the paragraph marks) for some reason having
to do with how Word stores formatting information. Turn on this viewing
option so you can see the P marks, then select all of the document _except_
the final paragraph marker. Then copy and paste. You can also try exporting
the file under a variety of different formats, such as RTF (Rich Text
Format) to see if that resolves the problem.
If that doesn't work, a desperation measure that might help is to open the
corrupted file, and save it as "text". You'll lose all your formatting, but
you should be able to recover all the text safely.
"Technical writing... requires understanding the audience, understanding
what activities the user wants to accomplish, and translating the often
idiosyncratic and unplanned design into something that appears to make
sense."--Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer
