It sounds as if they may be unsalvageable (except using Recover Text from
Any File), but it's hard to imagine what could have caused this. I guess it
would have been a good idea to check them before wiping the HD.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Brenda Rueter" wrote in message
...
Yes. The same problems occurred for me when representatives files were
emailed to me. I also saved them to HD before attempting to work with
them.

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
Has she copied the files to her HD before attempting to open them? Word
won't open files directly from a CD.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup
so
all may benefit.

"Brenda Hutton" wrote in message
...
User claims to have documents done in Word 2000 before having her
computer
reimaged with XP. A tech saved her documents to a CD before the
conversion.
Now none of the documents will open in Word (or anything else I have
yet
found). When attempted, a prompt comes up saying we need to install a
converter.

OK, I installed the converter on my machine. Now you have to select
what
you are converting FROM... I cannot find anything that changes the
boxes
on-screen representing characters to readable text.

In my experience these are sometimes ACTUALLY WordPerfect documents;
however, my WordPerfect 9 also cannot open the documents. Other times
I
see
.doc files that are actually Excel files, but again not in this case.
Excel
cannot open them either. Conversions Plus, a converting program,
cannot
open the files.

Last chance and yes, "recover text from any file" does open the files
with
the normal loss of formatting and extra "stuff" at the beginning
and/or
end
of the document.

Can anyone offer any possible scenarios as to what may have happened
to
apparently corrupt ALL of this user's files? Is there another option
I
have
not considered which would allow us to open them without loss of all
formatting?