Can't open Works Document in Microsoft Word!!!!!

smithson5

Hello

I have a Fujitsu laptop (3 years old) with Microsoft Works Word Processor.

I have just saved a really important essay I've been working on for weeks. I've emailed to my lecturers only to get emails back saying they can't open it. So when I've tried to open it to save it to another format to send to them again...I can't open it!

When I try and open it all's I get is a pop up saying: "Works cannot open 'C:\Users\laptop\Documents\Essay.wps' The file may be in use by another application, the file format may not be supported by any of the installed converters , or the file may be corrupt."

I can open every single other document I have got saved in Works (all saved in exactly the same way and exactly the same format as my essay), yet I can't open my essay!

I'm just so relieved I can open it from the email attachments I sent my lecturers, otherwise I'd be screwed!

Can anybody explain what is going on here? And how I can put it right? Its so annoying, it happened to me too when I saved the essay from my email attachment as an RTF file - I went back to check I could open it and I got the same pop-up message

Its like my essay (which is 10 pages of just standard text) vanishes into the abyss after I save it to my laptop!

I'd appreciate any help, thanks, smiths

pogofish

Works is awful for this IME. I'm afraid to say that a quick re-type is often the only option.

Sometimes a third party converter will get you a text file, which just needs reformatting but ditching Works for something that works is often better. Abi Word is free and multi-format compatible.

meames_2

If you can open it from the email why not copy and paste it into a blank doc and save that as an rtf ? Ctrl + A to select all, ctrl +c to copy, new doc and ctrl + v to paste.

have you got a hotmail account? can you use the basic Word in Skydrive?

Heedtheadvice

Great you have an email copy and would agree with Meames advice above.

but also......
1. Forward the email to yourself (with attachment) so that there is a second copy (on your email server if you use an ISP/provider's webmail and not therefore on your laptop in case you have a failing disc drive). If you use an email client such as Outlook make sure you back up to somewhere other than your hard drive.

2. Send in your essay as a pdf file rather than a wordprocessor file (provided that is acceptable to your lecturers - they probably have a pdf reader already). This has two main advantages as well as ease of portability in that it is more difficult for the recipient to corrupt/alter and your layout etc is preserved. All you need to do is to print it to a pdf writer instead of a printer and attach that file to your email. Plenty of pdf creator progs for free on the internet to download and install such as cutepdf http://www.cutepdf.com/index.htm and pdfcreator from pdfforge at http://www.pdfforge.org/

For something important better for belt, braces and string!

Addition: Didn't really address you original problem!
It does sound as if your original document has somehow got corrupted. Can you 'save as' as a text file and then reopen it? At least then you will have all the typing. It also is possible as mentioned above that you have a PC problem causing the corruption so you need to do a hard drive check and a virus check (you do have a virus checker/firewall) - if not get one now! I'll not mention backups eh?

EchoLocation

Here's a Microsoft support link

If you have it, or can save it, as an .rtf file, LibreOffice should be able to open it.
As a bonus you can then ditch Works and use LibreOffice instead which is free and can still save documents in the more widely used .doc format.

johnmc

Ditch Works and get either Libre Office or OpenOffice.

You can then save as a Microsoft Word format such as DOC or DOCX or, as others have said, download CutePDF and print it to a PDF file.