lost manuscript?

gb12345

Does your friend still have the original copy that he saved on his system prior to putting it on to DVD?

If so, ask him to open it and see if it looks OK on his system.

If it does then tell him to look on the menu of whatever software he used to open it and click on "Help" and look for an entry that says "About ..." - that should tell him what software he used to create it - if not open the About and that will get the name of it.

googler

Using Win Explorer, open up the DVD as a folder, and navigate to where the file is. Is the file extension shown in the name? The three or four characters after the dot.

Alternatively, right click on the file, and select Properties from the pop-up. What does that tell you?

shaun40400

file info#microsoft word document (.doc)

shaun40400

gb12345

that info is not available
im using ms word 2003(i think)

cant open it in explorer
when i click and ask it to open with another program it says,
it does not have a program associated with it for performing this action

Jivesinger

I'm going to guess Excel 2007 (or later) - would that make sense?
Note the following in the notepad file, which look like hints of Excel to me.

x l / w o r k s h e e t s / _ r e l s / s h e e t 1 . x m l . r e l s
x l / t h e m e / t h e m e 1 . x m l

If you're using Office 2003, have you installed the Microsoft Compatibility Pack that lets Office 2003 read 2007 format files? If you haven't then it may help to do so. It's a free download on the Microsoft site somewhere.

Then try again, opening the file from within Excel as suggested above (and within Word if that doesn't work) rather than by double-clicking.

Renaming the file to have an extension of .xlsx (for Excel) or .docx (for Word) might work.

Be careful though, you may need to make sure Windows isn't hiding file extensions from you before this works (somewhere within Windows Explorer/ File Explorer, then find Options (or Tools | Options or View | Options or something like that)). There should be an option called "Hide extensions for known file types" which you may want to untick for now.

debitcardmayhem

shaun40400 wrote: »

gb12345

that info is not available
im using ms word 2003(i think)

cant open it in explorer
when i click and ask it to open with another program it says,
it does not have a program associated with it for performing this action

In Windows explorer ....Right click on it and select properties , then the details tab under name it should say fred.xxx the xxx bit is the extension

Edited:
looks like eagle eyed fella (Jivesinger) above spotted something useful, if you don't have excell use LibreOffice which is free ....

laurel7172

I had a similar problem with some college essays a couple of years back-my Office 2010 deeply offended the 2003 on the college computers, even when I had submitted a supposedly compatible document.

This is what finally worked:

DO NOT use Calibri, or any other font that isn't in all older versions of Word. Stick to a classic like Arial.

Have your friend re-save it in a rich text or .pdf format (File/save as/pick from the drop down menu)

Hope that helps.

Mirno

It's almost certainly an Excel 2007 formatted file (xlsx or xlsm).
The odd thing though is that I would expect the first two letters in notepad to be PK - the docx and xls[xm] formats are zipped collections of XML (you can rename it to a .zip and open it up in fact).

If the notepad dump was from the end of the file and they're there that's all good - but if they're missing it implies the file has been truncated / modified - which would ruin it as it's a compressed archive.

Best thing to do is take a copy and rename it .xlsx, and open with Excel 2007 or later (or 2003 + 2007 format pack).

Second best - if you don't have Excel 2003 or higher is to download open office and try opening it with that.

Mirno

shaun40400

unfortunately the pc has now gone to the grave yard in the sky,nd my friend is now in oz ;-(
hence all the problems

i have ms office could i use excell in that and if so how?

thanks for all the help so far everyone.

gb12345

As Mirno says, the extract of the file you posted doesn't look like an office format as the header portion is wrong.

Did you post the start of the file?

Excel should open it if it really is an Excel file, but you will need to copy it and rename the copy as a .xlsx file otherwise it will just default to Word opening it.

It also seems strange that someone would use Excel to create a manuscript.