[PLUG] Accessing Old Microsoft Files With OO.o-2.1

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Sun Feb 3 17:12:17 UTC 2008


On Sun, 3 Feb 2008, Michael Ewan wrote:

> One thing to consider before you abandon all hope, during that time frame,
> MS Office saved files in rtf, but named them .doc, in the name of
> compatibility with other versions of the software.

   The file under discussion was created with PowerPoint-7.0b. When I looked
at it, I could see some text strings among all the binary blocks. Saved a
copy as *.doc, but that didn't work, either.

> It was a major kludge they fixed in the next release.  Since you looked at
> the file already with less, I suspect this is what happened, since a true
> doc file wouldn't be readable as text.  Look at the first line of the file
> and see if it says RTF anywhere, or just rename it as file.rtf and see if
> OO.o can read it then.

   Strangely enough, toward the top of the file is this:

^@^@^@^@^T^@^@^@&^F^O^@^^^@<FF><FF><FF><FF>^D^@^T^@^@^@Word^N^@Microsoft
Word^E

That's why I tried as a .doc file.

   Anyway, it's FUBAR and that's OK.

Thanks, Michael,

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |  Integrity            Credibility
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.        |            Innovation
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517      Fax: 503-667-8863



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