Turn Off Compatibility Mode in Word 2010

Rohn007,

Can I be frank, I'm elderly, tired, disabled, have got Parkinsons Disease, and am registered as functionally blind, my knowledge of computers is also 'disabled', not through lack of interest or intellect, but by not having anyone who can show me things.

For instance I can't find the file button, so when 5 people at least on here say: Click File, Go to Options, Click Advanced, from the drop down menu choose X, I'm lost, why is this?  Because there is no File Button, there is the four-square boxes logo, and when I click that options does not appear, so now you know.  I thought in less than 70 ordinary simple words someone would steer me right, but need to add even if they did so, I would have to ask someone to come over to read what they advised, and to carryout what they suggest. May I add a functionally blind persons got good eyesight, all it means is the persons eyelids will not open on command, or some days at all. Just like that damned file I treasured so much.  My regards and thank you's, Warmdog.

Hey dog ...  lets work on the terminology some more.  I'm not being nit picky, I am just trying to clarify some misuse of terms that is causing confusion (reading your posts makes my brain hurt ... <grin> ).

There is no "Windows 2010" operating system. If you had Vista, you changed to Win 7 or Win 8.

There is no "Word 97-2003", There were four versions of Word in that time frame that used the same file extension. The label "Word 97-2003" is just a generic text description of the ".DOC" file format.   So which version of Word were you working with? (Probably 2003, but not necessarily).

Yes, when you open an older file format, such as "DOC", or even a 2007 DOCX in Word 2010, Word will display that "Compatibility Mode" descriptive label. That tells you that you are working with a file format that does not support all of the features your version of Word has.  The unsupported features are also disabled, displayed "greyed out'.

Compatibility mode would not cause this blank page problem.  BUT, repeated editing of a file in multiple versions of Word, going back and forth between versions, has been known to cause corruption that shows such symptoms.

You could also look for a discussion about "End tags", a poster called "Jeeped" fixes similar problems. He may be able to fix your file by editing the underlying XML and finding the "broken" XML codes that are causing your problem.

Here is a shotgun collection of links that discuss various ways of fixing corrupt files (pick ones that seem relevant to your problem):

Here is a collection of links from socrtwo who has done a lot of work on document corruption

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-word/the-file-docx-cannot-be-opened-because-there-are/15ab9209-9936-4b2d-907e-b614590553be

See this list of resources. I’m working on improved software for recovering from Word corruption.

·      http://godskingsandheroes.info/software/index.htm#3 - command line extractor of corrupt and healthy text from MS Office docx, xlsx and pptx. Coded for me by CCY and using the same Delphi code as the GUI Corrupt Office 2007 Extractor found on my SourceForge page: http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120709021353/http://www.ccyjchk.com/catalog/

·      http://silvercoders.com/en/products/doctotext/ - command line program used by several of my GUI programs which has a feature for recovering text from corrupt docx, xlsx, pptx, odt, ods and odp files (the last three being the Open Office extensioned files).

·      http://docx2txt.sourceforge.net/ - Perl based solution that some of my programs use.

·      http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/office-open-xml-file-docx-cannot-opened-t3714016.html - member chrima mentions an algorithm for correcting Table of Content errors, that used to appear I think in Word 2007 before one of the Office Services Packs fixed it. If anybody knows that the TOC document.xml errors are still occurring let me know. In the same thread, member Ben3DX offers some Python code to automate the process. I will try to implement both their ideas in my code.

·      http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2528942 - Microsoft Mr. Fixit that is supposed to be fixed by Office 2010 SP1. If you are getting “The name in the end tag of the element must match the element type in the start tag.” and your Word document has math formulas, this might fix it (or update to Office 2010 SP1).

·      http://www.wordarticles.com/temp/Rebuilder.dotm  - this free Word Add-in will fix issues with some but maybe not all math papers experiencing the “end tag of the element must match the element type in the start tag” error.

·      http://runferalrun.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/the-name-in-the-end-tag-of-the-element-word-2010-error/ - fixing the “The name in the end tag of the element must match the element type in the start tag.” document.xml by hand.

·      http://blogs.technet.com/b/wordonenotesupport/archive/2011/03/24/error-when-opening-a-word-2007-or-2010-document.aspx - for fixing repeating errors of the “The name in the end tag of the element must match the element type in the start tag.” variety, which may be mainly documents with math formulas in them.

·      http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2817583 - probably the hotfix most relevant to users with “Unspecified error Location: Part/word/document.xml,Line:2, Column: 0” errors. These are apparently sometimes or always papers with math formulas in them as well. The download button is up at the top of the page.

·      http://sourceforge.net/users/socrtwo22 - the list of my free software, many of which will recover text and some try formatting too. The text extraction abilities are stronger than the various software’s ability recover text and formatting. The programs that recover formatting use the overkill method of truncating at the first XML error, a method I’m moving past now. Some of the GUI programs use the command line text extractors on their back ends.

·      http://free-data-recovery.blogspot.com/2012/03/secrets-of-recovering-corrupt-office.html - My blog post that details how to do truncation and XML end tag fixing on the document.xml file. This method is efficient only when the first XML error is the beginning of a truncated document.xml due to zip corruption or some other XML corruption which corrupts the XML beyond recovery starting at the error location. It tells you how to use xmllint to add the correct XML tags automatically to truncated XML files. Theoretically xmllint is supposed to fix bad XML with some intelligence say even if your XML has correct ending tags and is corrupt somewhere in the middle, however in practice it may be only useful for adding correct ending tags.

·      http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-word/i-got-an-error-saying-the-file-group-6-mini/5b553957-dae7-4fbd-b1f5-13606d9f035f - there are Word MVPs who are recovering corrupt Word files on request there. I recover Word files too but I charge $22 :-). There are probably other threads in Microsoft communities bulletin boards where free recovery is being offered, search here. I refund $17 if the recovery is unsuccessful and work usual with a 2-5 hour turnaround: http://saveofficedata.com/contact.htm.

·      http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/11c6f40d-e229-428a-9d76-cf0e5be3b8c8/corrupted-word-2007-file-unspecified-error - has a nice algorithm by Daniel “3ICE” Berezvai, for recovering from document.xml errors. Daniel is another nice tech who sometime repairs document.xml files upon request.

·      http://onlinerecovery.munsoft.com/ - they will let you recover 10 files for free if you mention their name and link from Facebook, Twitter or your blog. Their recovery algorithm works quite well.

·      https://online.officerecovery.com/ - Recoveronix’ Online File Recovery. One of the oldest names in the business is kindly offering a free recovery for users who go through a Demo recovery and then use the coupon code “S2SERVICES” (the name of my business :-) until Nov. 1, 2013. Often works.

·      http://www.repairmyword.com/ - freeware text extractor that works with corrupt doc files only.

·      On the subject of doc files, there is also an obscure free Microsoft tool described in a white paper here:http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=2096 and downloadable here:http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=158791. It has an automatic repair feature that supposedly works for recovering some corrupt doc, xls and ppt files.

·                http://wayback.archive.org/web/20030808203530/http://www.microsystems.com/exp_Fixing_Broken_Word_Documents.htm - lengthy article on how to fix Word doc files particularly those imported from WordPerfect I think.

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Additional Written Resources

Q87856 - Trouble shooting Damaged Documents in Word 97 for Windows (Knowledge Base)

How to trouble shoot damaged documents in Word 2007 and in Word 2010 (Knowledge Base)

*How can I recover a corrupt document and why did it become corrupt?* MVP Dave Rado on the MVP FAQ site.

Fixing Broken Word Documents by Kate Evert at Microsystems

Microsoft Word 2010 Bible by Herb Tyson, MVP

Potential Causes of DOCX Corruption - Problems saving to USB Devices

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wordcreate/thread/73a1e1b0-e6cf-43b8-a97f-0b01b5c33da3/

http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/document_corruption.htm

• Adbalance Legal Users Guide – Corruption chapter

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2032681

• Managing and Sharing Office 2013 Files

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TROUBLE SHOOTING WORD AND DOC CORRUPTION

To learn more information on this topic (and there is quite a bit), refer to the following page at the Word MVP site: http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm[http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm](http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm)

http://lounge.windowssecrets.com/index.php?s=965c08f05aa3e2e40cd935247136dfaa&showtopic=197827                  Systematic Approach to Behavioral Problems in Word (Word 97/2000) (Woody’s Lounge)

Note: While the steps below work in Word 2002 & 2003, each of these versions has a trouble shooting tool that automates the process (except for deleting temp files). You can read about & download the 2002 Support Template and 2003 Support Template. My thanks to Rebel for pointing out these tools.

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How to trouble shoot damaged documents in Word 2007 and in Word 2010

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918429

Article ID: 918429 - Last Review: May 20, 2010 - Revision: 6.0

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Trouble shooting damaged documents in Word for Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/87856   -Last Review: November 16, 2006 - Revision: 2.1

see: http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/MissingMenusEtc.htm[http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/MissingMenusEtc.htm](http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/MissingMenusEtc.htm)

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How can I recover a corrupt document or template – and why did it become corrupt?

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http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm

Recovering Corrupt Document Files with StarOffice

http://word.tips.net/T001513_Recovering_Corrupt_Document_Files_with_StarOffice.html

Summary: A possibility to try if you have a corrupt document.

It is interesting that Sun StarOffice 5.2 read the corrupted Word file without problem, although one section of text was not recoverable. Saving the file from StarOffice as a Word document file and loading it back into Word recovered the situation.

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Corrupt / Damaged DOCX file reader

http://www.saveofficedata.com/

This site has several tools for reading damage Office files.

DOCX format is based on ZIP format.  If the ZIP format document is corrupt and cannot be opened in Word 2007, this tool will extract text.

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Namosofts Office Doc recovery

http://www.pr-inside.com/namosofts-launched-its-new-production-namosofts-r2853421.htm 

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http://www.namosofts.com/products/file\_recovery.html

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10+ ways to recover a corrupted Word document

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=952&tag=nl.e056 

Few computer experiences are worse than having a Word document blow up on you. But before you resign yourself to losing the document contents, check out these techniques for salvaging your text.

If you’ve ever had an important document get corrupted, you know the despair that sets in. You’ve lost critical information and/or countless hours of work - or so it appears. But hang on: You may not have to accept data loss. Here are some things you can try when you’re dealing with a corrupted Word document.

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Online Extract Word/Excel Text (Beta)

http://saveofficedata.com/

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S2 Services Software Data Recovery Freeware

http://www.s2services.com/s2services-freeware.htm 

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Corrupt Office 2007 - 2010 Extractor 3.2.0

http://corrupt-office-extractor.smartcode.com/info.html

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Office File Repair

http://file-repair.en.softonic.com/

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RecoveryFix for Word

http://www.mswordrecovery.com/

This free demo edition of this MS word recovery software does not come with any limitations of time period or number of installations. However, the repaired Word documents will have text DEMO stamped after each paragraph within your Word text contents.

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Repair DOCX – I have not tried this tool

http://www.repairdocx.net/damaged-file.html

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Corrupt Files Paid repair service

http://www.s2services.com/corrupt.htm

If you need help, I charge $22 per incident. You can E-mail me at ******@s2ervces.com, but because of finances and legalities, I I only use free methods.

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Corrupt Files and Some Simple Things to Try

http://www.s2services.com/corrupt.htm

Microsoft Office and other files can become corrupted and/or unopenable in a number of different ways. The corruption can occur if the application crashes, if Windows crashes, if the file is infected with a macro virus, if the actual sectors on the disk become unreadable, power outages etc. Click here to view some typical corrupt MS Office errors.

The most common type of file corruption issues faced by users is MS Office file corruption.  Microsoft Office programs are finicky about file structure so when you try to open the file again, you can get an error and the file won’t open even though most or all of your data and formatting are still contained in it. More rarely the file will open but the data will appear garbled. As the version numbers of Office get higher, the ability to recover corrupt files increases.

The best way to start recovery of an MS Office file is to make a copy of the file. The next thing you can try to do on the copy is to open the file in the MS Office program, but to use the “Open and Repair” Option. This is only available in Word and Excel.  For Access users there is a database “Compact and Repair” Function through the “Tools” Menu.  For Outlook users there exists a less well known Outlook file repair program available on any PC with MS Office installed. The Outlook PST Repair Tool is described below.

To get to the “Open and Repair” Option in Word and Excel, select your file in the Open Dialogue Window and then left clicking on the little down arrow next to the “Open” Button. See the two dark red arrows in the screenshot below:

In Excel there are three modes of recovery that follow the Open Repair Choice. They are “Repair” and Two under the “Extract Data” Button: “Convert to Values” and “Recover Formulas”. In Word, choosing the “Open and Repair” Choice gives an immediate response with no further choices required.

For Excel there are additional explicit free Excel procedures you can use. You can view and try them here. Some of the ideas are applicable to Word, PowerPoint, and Access files, for instance opening the applications in safe mode before opening the files.

Another thing I try to do is to open the MS Office File in another Office suite. I have used for recovery, Microsoft Works 7, Lotus Smart Suite 9.8 (the most recent version), Corel WordPerfect Suite Professional X4, Star Office 9, Open Office 3.1, Ability Office V5, ThinkFree Office, Gobe Productive Office, EIOffice (a Chinese entrant to this field!), and a few other recent entries. I also use the Abiword and Atlantis word processors for recovery. Open Office, Abiword, and a version of Atlantis Word Processor are all freeware, and if you have the time, I would encourage you to download these and try to open your files in them before purchasing any software or recovery services.

The reason other office suites and programs work, is because they are often less finicky than MS Office about file structure. All the office suites and programs have filters which allow the import of MS Office files.

Regarding Outlook, if you store your messages on your computer, and not on a company server, the place where all the computers user’s E-mail, contacts, appointments etc. are stored is in one file with a .pst extension. Unfortunately if you have Office XP (Office 2002) or earlier, if this file gets larger the 2 GBs in size, it will not open and you will lose access to all your Outlook folders. Microsoft put out a free program which will safely prune off a small portion of the file to get it under 2 GB in size. This pruned off piece is permanently lost. There is another free Microsoft program included with MS Office which will restore corrupt Outlook files. That would be pst files that have other problems than the size issue. See here for the explanation.

There is also some free software for restoring corrupt Outlook Express files (dbx and MBx), again look at this freeware resource page for the links to the software.

If the free methods mentioned above don’t work or don’t interest you, there are many pieces of commercial software available for quickly recovering files. Please note it is my strong suggestion to try the demo versions of all these programs first before buying.

For a good quick solution to Word corruption, I would use my sponsor’s WordFix by Cimaware or WordRecovery by Recoveronix. They are somewhat expensive but may offer the best solution.  If you have used Word 2007 new docx format, then I have released freeware myself which will at least salvage the text for free.

For Excel, the quick best choice again are two of the early pioneers in the field Cimaware’s ExcelFix or Recoveronix’ ExcelRecovery. For PowerPoint the only real effective choice most times in the past was Ontrack’s EasyRecovery FileRepair although there are several other recent entries worth trying that you can get to starting here.  Again for Excel 2007 xlsx format files I have released a basic data salvage freeware tool.

For Access the best program used to be  AccessRecovery by Recoveronix although the EasyRecovery Suites came in a close second but only for Access 2003 or older files.  The OnTrack EasyRecovery Suite has not updated to the new Office 2007 formats and is therefore falling behind other companies probably in general. 

AccessFix by Cimaware has undoubtedly become a good choice due their very active development department but I have not had a file to test it on in 2-3 years.  Try their demo too as it is certainly cheaper than the other two if it works.

For Outlook (pst) try the free ways mentioned above first then the demos for Cimaware’s OutlookFix, Iolo’s Search and Recover, Recoveronix OutlookRecovery, and Ontrack EasyRecovery EmailRepair, with the Iolo product the cheapest by almost an order of magnitude but not necessarily the best for you, try all the demos first. I don’t have enough experience to differentiate the programs.

Please note: Honestly the commercial software and services is the route you will sometimes have to take to recover your data. Generally, it’s a lot easier to find free programs for file repair for non-Microsoft products than Microsoft ones.  You can explore them by following the links to the left. 

On those occasions that you try the freeware and it doesn’t work, the software in these pages will appear not be worth the time and effort you put in and this can be frustrating. I try to point out at the top of each page, what I see is the likelihood that and difficulty with which freeware can recover your data.

The Google Adsense Ads displayed on the pages should lead you to the standard commercial software and services available for the problem you are having. You can also try the commercial links by clicking on the Navigation Bar by the file type name on the left. It’s also here.

To see if the program works before buying, always be sure to try the demos of commercial software first. Also the difference in prices for software that does the same thing, for instance recovering PowerPoint Presentations, can be a large range like with PowerPoint case $50 – 299. If possible, try several software solutions before buying.  For services, be sure there is a no data, no fee guarantee, and a recovered file preview available.

If you need help, I charge $22 per incident. You can E-mail me at ******@s2ervces.com,but because of finances and legalities, I I only use free methods.

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s2Services - several Freeware tools for Data recovery:

Links to 5 tools that may help recover text and if you are lucky formatting from corrupt Office files. Each tool uses a different technique:

·      http://sourceforge.net/projects/wordrecovery/ - S2 Word Recovery tool provides GUI access to many MS recommended techniques

·      http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickwordrecovr/ - Savvy Corrupt Word File Recovery tool deletes some text at point of error, re-inserts missing XML tags.

·      http://sourceforge.net/projects/crrptoffcxtrctr/ - Corrupt DOCX Extractor recovers just the text.

·      http://sourceforge.net/projects/damageddocx2txt/ - Corrupt DOCX Salavager recovers just the text different algorithm than Corrupt DOCX Extractor.

·      https://online.officerecovery.com/word/ - Online upload tool that will do a demo recovery. Scroll down past the Results section and input the coupon “S2SERVICES” to receive a $39 free recovery. Good until may 1, 2013.

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s2Services - Free Ways to Recover Text And Maybe Formatting From Corrupt MS Word DOC & DOCX Files

http://s2services.com/word\_repair.htm

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POSSIBLE CLUE TO 'BLANK PAGE' ERROR FAULT.

PS: 11 FEB 2014,

I have just tried to save a document created in 1997-2003 word, now being saved in 2007 Word, Using Windows 2010, I clicked on SAVE AS, and noticed 5 options in the right hand column, one of them was

to the effect of: Save this document in a mode compatible with 1997-2003 word, I clicked yes, and all was okay. It saved okay, and is now marked - titled - 'COMPATABILITY MODE'.

The blank page document I am trying to restore, may have been saved in the DEFAULT MODE,  which caused the blank page creation.? I hope this makes some sense to the obvious experts on here? Thank you.