[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Word 2000 had more trouble with tables than the following versions, but you said that this issue is also seen in the 2002
originating version.

Your best chance is, as mentioned, working with this on the affected computer, where you might turn up some temp file versions of
the document and be able to check for any issues with the drive itself or an interfering addin.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the recover text from any file part is there any portion that is in 'plain text'? Ordinarily a
Word document file being dissected by the recovery engine would be able to locate a list of things like styles and show those. If
not, you may not have a file that is actually a .doc. It's possible that the process Word uses on files (open creates a temp file,
you work on the temp file, save/close replace the original with the temp file and names it to .doc) may have failed.

Is the file you have about the 'right size'?

You mentioned 6 documents, were they all opened at the same time?

==============
"82412" wrote in message ...
Sorry, my last post was slightly misleading. The Recover text from any file
procedure does still produce gibberish, but in fact it's different gibberish
(small sample below)

$z)W:^¼9J?
nE=byE
,¨ísaJ1a4
80
fSp/.-)
R_ÞHwYÅt¸IZÿ*%¦nmA¾¿
;cÇ'+ô, qK
|S"Êù8Êy+@=G1
oö÷g¢É%" X¿{Ro
`/Ò¯ 2udÒBZæ×(2zjÖLhc0@ óTj



I'm guessing that this is a very bad sign.
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*