Mrs. Muddled Posted March 11, 2007 Posted March 11, 2007 The other user of this computer has a BIG problem with the two most important files he has on his side of the computer. No, he did not back up the files. He has two files that he has been regularly adding information to. When he tried to open them today he discovered they are no longer .doc files, they are now sporting the Adobe Acrobat icon and an .ODT extension ... and they appear to be empty. I have searched high and low on the computer and I can't find his files. I have no idea how a .doc file could suddenly become an .ODT file with an Adobe icon. The only fly in the ointment that I can think of is this: I had switched to OOo and didn't like it, so switched back to MS. I don't recall exactly when I switched back ... but he hasn't opened these files since December. None of my files were corrupted in the switch either way. I've left a message on OOo. So far I'm getting nowhere. Do you have any idea what "might" have happened to destroy these two files. Is there some way a pro could restore the two files after all the times I've "cleaned" the computer with Clean-up and defragged etc.? Quote
heyguy Posted March 11, 2007 Posted March 11, 2007 Sounds like he had opened the .doc using OpenOffice and saved it as a .odt. Why not just reinstall OpenOffice, open the file, and save it as a .doc again? Quote
Mrs. Muddled Posted March 11, 2007 Author Posted March 11, 2007 (edited) Sounds like he had opened the .doc using OpenOffice and saved it as a .odt. Why not just reinstall OpenOffice, open the file, and save it as a .doc again? You're serious right? Do you think that would work? What's with the Adobe icons? I don't see why only those two files in the computer would fail to switch back and forth from OOo to MS, By the way ... I checked the ODT file and it says it is a Word file. Edited March 12, 2007 by Mrs. Muddled Quote
Mrs. Muddled Posted March 12, 2007 Author Posted March 12, 2007 I have solved the problem. My husband owes me BIG TIME!!!! Quote
Mrs. Muddled Posted March 15, 2007 Author Posted March 15, 2007 I followed this instruction: Renamed the file as a ZIP file. Change the extension of OpenOffice.org document from whatever it is (like ODT, ODS, ODP, ODG, ODB, ODF) to a ZIP extension. Then open the file using Microsoft Windows or WinZip. If you're lucky, you'll see a bunch of files contained in this newly-created Zip file. One of them is called "content.xml". Open this file with any text editor, and you may find your document text. It will have a bunch of formatting statements you'll have to delete, but the actual text should be there too. I can't begin to tell you how pleased I was with myself. I spent a whole day trying to figure this out. I was determined to get those &%$$ files back! Quote
carbonize Posted March 27, 2007 Posted March 27, 2007 Or you could of just opened OpenOffice writer and dragged the ODT document onto it to open it then pressed F12 to save it as something else and changed the file type in there to .doc Quote
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