(edit title) Text documents Microsoft Microsoft Millenium to Vista Options

[cbgbg]

Is there an IT expert that can give me a few tips.

I recently gave my Vista computer to my neighbour whom has Millenium.

Over the years he has written pages after pages of text but when we burn them to a disc and try to open them on his new (old) Vista we cannot open them.

Any sensible ideas will be greatly appreciated

[Vstrommer71]

Check whether the optical disk can be browsed within My Computer(in Vista PC) just in case there is a faulty optical disc.If the disc can be browsed but the files cannot be opened,next step!

Has he written them in MS Office Word or another text editor?
In case of Word(let's say old versions of MS Office suite) there is some compatibility backwards in the suite.If you have any newer edition of the suite installed in the Vista PC,it can usually be able to open the older files.Anyway,if it doesn't, download and use the MS viewing tool to see the contents.

Hope this helps!

[David S]

assuming the disc itself can be accessed, what are the file extensions?

[Garry Jones]

Before you do anything make copies

An Operating system does not read text files. He simply had a program on the old machine he no longer has.

Try opening with notepad.

Try opening as rtf in wordpad.

Try opening with a browser.

Use works and word filters to read files. There are even stand alone free programs to read works, word, pdf formats, etc.

To find any lost info use diskdigger, download to another pc and run directly from a usb.

[cbgbg]

Thanks for all the replies. Im not sure what format the text is in but ill go round to him over the weekend and try to copy everything and try the above.

[BritVik]

If the docs were written using Word, then there have been variations to just Word over the years, and MS have conversion files available on their website. Older versions of Word cannot open documents made using newer versions, despite having the same .doc suffix. This is one of the many failings of Microsoft - lack of backward compatibility. Also, the very latest Word documents now have the suffix .docx and they will definitely not open in older versions of Word without the necessary conversion file. Try the MS website for the conversion file download.

[Vstrommer71]

This is true.Older versions of MS Office are having trouble when trying to open files written via newer editions,that's why Microsoft publiced the compatibility packs.
We assume that our friend's Vista PC has eg Office 2007 installed and it cannot open text files from older versions,that's the problem.
Anyway,we are waiting for more info

[cbgbg]

Hi, I have burnt the text to a disc and i cannot open it in vista or my windows 7. I think its probably best if my neighbour just rewrites the documents again even if its time consuming. Again thank to everybody for your help

[Vstrommer71]

You are yet to make it clear:Can you browse the contents of the disc(if not,something's wrong with the writting itself) OR you can browse the contents of the disc but you cannot open the specific files?

[Gamla Hälsingebock]

Is the disc compatible with the CD ROM?...Some newer discs cannot be read by older CD drives.

[Garry Jones]

If his drive is reformatted and he no longer has the source files he can try diskdigger which will probably find the files. (It even works after a complete format and reset to factory settings. (You can find some interesting stuff on "new" laptops as many of them have actually been used by customers who have returned machines or in shop displays).

If he has the source files try copying onto a usb. I really do not think anything needs to be recreated here.

[Kitale]

Be smart: get a Mac

[Garry Jones]

Sorry, can't stand macs. I have been in computers since the 70's, I need my dos prompt, for no matter how you dress windows up it is still loaded as a DOS app.

There is so much one can do with a pc dos prompt that saves hours of work. File renaming for one when renaming 20 000 files for instance. Being able to merge and append files, create directory listings with criteria not available in windows or mac. 15-20 years ago Macs ruled for desktop publishing, but with Apples anti-adobe stance (no flash on iphone/ipad) macs should be banned. Restrictive practices should not be encouraged.

[Gamla Hälsingebock]

Where did Linux go?

[Yorkshireman]

There is a good chance that Your friends computer which is quite an old version of windows actually came pre-installed with Microsoft Works, where documents were not alwasy compatible with Microsoft Office.

If He still has his word processor program, MS Works or MS Office with MS Word ... then open the documents on that computer and try Save As,.,, and save as Rich Text Format *.rtf ... word and works document formats changed over the years, but RTF always stayed more-or-less the same. You may lose some formatting, but saves re-writting completely.