Unmistakable symptoms. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/RecoverText.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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"david" wrote in message
...
For three years, I have used several word 97 tables with mail merge to
print
Christmas card envelopes. This year when I opened the tables to edit them,
they were text in a column, not a table. I tried using them with mail
merge
and they work fine; however, the text column is hard to edit.

In windows explorer, I created a new folder and moved the files to that
folder. If I double click on one of the files in explorer, the file opens
in
word 97 and is a table. When I open word 97 and then open the file, it is
the text column. I can not seem to find what is causing the files to be
different.

I am using winxp home sp2.

David