Fun with mac word formats

jaguar · 09-01-2002, 04:13 AM

I got sent a doc about an hour ago i need to be able to read. It came from a mac user via hotmail, the file had no ending. I opened it up with notepad. Above the first apragraph was..

Quote:

XXXX...? W6BNMSWD ( =¹—«¹—³´ mBIN ‚¹ ÐÏà¡±á ; þÿ þÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ
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XXXX being my censorship. From this i'm guessing its a Word 6 doc, made on a mac. If i rename it to .doc it opens but it cannot find a decoder for it, none of the options it suggests work. I renamed it to the Mac Word 5 format, same result. WHile i can read the basic text the paragraphs partially repeat and overlap, as though its storing all the edits. Opening it as a .doc reveals some more stuff like:

Quote:

Document þÿÿÿNB6W Word.Document.6 ; ÿþ

and a ton of vaguely recogniseable bits of formatting for paragraphs, timestamps, owner name, fonts etc.

Help! I could really do with being able to open this properly, anyone got any ideas? Anyone with a mac willing to give it a shot for me?

EDIT: I put some retuns in that long line of Ys so it doesn't stuff the layout.

russotto · 09-01-2002, 06:01 PM

Run it through something that can decode MacBinary (Stuffit Expander, maybe?) Or just strip the first 128 bytes. Then rename it to .doc and open it.

jaguar · 09-02-2002, 03:40 AM

Tried various things. I went though again and managed to get all the text out of it, so ill leave it there. Thanks anyway.

09-02-2002, 03:40 AM	#3
jaguar whig Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 5,075	Tried various things. I went though again and managed to get all the text out of it, so ill leave it there. Thanks anyway. __________________ Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Twain

09-01-2002, 06:01 PM	#2
russotto Professor Join Date: Jan 2001 Posts: 1,788	Run it through something that can decode MacBinary (Stuffit Expander, maybe?) Or just strip the first 128 bytes. Then rename it to .doc and open it.

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