Formatting in Word 97

[[email protected]]

Manager of OB in a local hospital had several hundred docs with inserted tables with pt names, etc. No one else has access to her office but her and IS dept. This morning all word documents are just lines of text.( her phrase) I know it must be a simple fix with formatting or something, but cant think of where. Any ideas

[ilovetheusers]

Mmmmmm, don't think that a format change is gonna whipe .doc across the board like that without opening them at all.

Try going to technet and looking or try M$ site for answers. Also, I would have the user update the virus scanner and do a scan. If all else fails reinstall Office 97 to see if that put settings back to normal.

[NooToo]

It does sound like the .dot template has either been changed or is missing for these documents and word is using the normal.dot that it has. Macro virii are a good possiblity here

[AndyT]

What file server is she connecting to.

I know that there are a couple on Novel patches that we aplied that screwed up our office documents. We just got a bad lot as when we got new one again it was ok.

Also check for viruses as mentioned above as this sound more likely to be a macro virus than anything else.

[tha 4NiK8R]

reinstall Office. If that doesn't work knock off office again and her browser. Reinstall both with current updates from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

[Mr_Miyagi]

Originally posted by James Kitts:
Manager of OB in a local hospital had several hundred docs with inserted tables with pt names, etc. No one else has access to her office but her and IS dept. This morning all word documents are just lines of text.( her phrase) I know it must be a simple fix with formatting or something, but cant think of where. Any ideas

just a hunch, but has the "view" changed from page layout to some other? this has happened to me on occasions and without intervention.

[MacGyver]

Myagi sounds like he's on the right track, but here is another thing to check. I had one user in my office complain that her 20-page Word document suddenly became 240 pages and there was nothing on any of the pages. The reason this was happening was that she inserted a BMP file into the header at FULL SIZE so the header expanded to cover several pages, messing up the entire document.

My point is, before you try reinstalling stuff, make sure there isn't anything wrong with the document itself. Open it on another computer, and if the problem persists you know it is with the document and NOT the software.

[WebHead]

The file(s) might be hosed. Sounds like all the tabel information is gone and you're just left with the text. You may have to recreate the docs from scratch. Make sure to tell her to always backup her files so it doesn't happen again.