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Old Word File Issue


Jayk

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Hi All,

I have come across a peculiar issue at work accessing some old word documents kept on an old file server, which is required to be decommisioned. These documents were created with word 5.0 I believe. Now the issue was brought to my attention after moving these files to a new file server, which at the time created no issues. However; upon shutting down the old file server, when our users tried to access some of these older files, word would just go into a limbo type state. No error msg's or anything and wouldn't open the files.

After realising this the old server was powered back up and then when users went to open those same files, word opened them without any issues.

Can anyone help with this weird and vague problem.

Cheers,

Jason

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There are bout 60,000 word doc's approximately. That would take quite alot of time to do. The issue is when I shut down the old file server, that word 2003 sp3 starts to limbo. But when the old file server is up, there's no issue. Would this mean there is server info kept with the older word doc's????

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Hi Jayk,

did you installed the Service Pack 3 for Office2003 (except in the old file server...)?

If so, I had a similar problem with Word 2.0, Word 95 and WORD 97 (!!!) DOC files, and perhaps these MS KB articles can help you:

"Information about certain file formats that are blocked after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3"

or

"You receive an error message when you try to open or to save a file type that was blocked by your registry policy settings in Word 2007 or in Word 2003"

Links:

"http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938810/en-us"

"http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922849/en-us".

Ciao

Liano

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I just implemented a successful workaround for the same issue. Word docs hanging on opening...but if you wait long enough they come up. Reason? Server decommissioned.

If you wait long enough...60 seconds...the document finally opens. If you then pull down the Tools menu and select Addins and Templates, you will most likely see that the document is referencing a template on the decommissioned server. Since the server is no longer there, the document is looking, looking, looking, timing out, and finally opening.

Workaround?

You or your network admin will need access to your dns mmc in Admin Tools. You'll probably discover that the Server name and its old IP address are still listed in DNS. Therefore, the template associated with the doc is going to look for that old server and dns is telling the doc that the server is still there. But you know it's not, because you shut down that server.

However, you can edit the IP address of that old record and put in the IP address of the new server where all the templates are now located (actually try deleting the record first to see if that works, then try making the phony record if it doesn't). Moreover, if the template associated with the thousands of docs is no longer in existence, you can still create a new one and give it the old name. It can just be a blank template, but give it the name of the old discarded template.

Bottom line, you don't need to keep a 5 year old server running forever just because word docs won't open. You just need to tell the "traffic cop" that the old server isn't there anymore so the docs don't wait forever to open.

In our case, the docs went from opening after 60 seconds to 2 seconds. It worked.

Adam

Washington, DC

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  • 3 weeks later...

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