Macworld: My novel is being held prisoner ...

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12 Replies Last post: Jan 7, 2005 4:48 AM by macnuke

Pel2na

3 posts since
Dec 22, 2004

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Dec 25, 2004 11:50 PM

My novel is being held prisoner

I'm a writer who recently acquired a G3 Imac. I transferred all my documents from my old Power Mac, but then had to wait for a couple of months while I squirreled away the price of Microsoft Office. In the meantime I started a novel in TextEdit. About 50 pages in, the novel stopped opening. All I could get was a message that said "TextEdit failed to open". Soon after I finally installed Office and tried to open the novel with Word. Now the message reads, "Word cannot open this document. The document might be in use or might not be a valid Word document." I've gone to Info, changed to a Word document, checked permissions, still no joy. How can I get my novel out of jail or Purgatory or whatever?

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albloom

2,182 posts since
Apr 21, 2004

1. Dec 26, 2004 5:39 AM

in response to: Pel2na

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

Do you have Classic on the G3? Can you boot into OS9?
It sometimes helps to boot into 9, the try to open
with SimpleText.

If TextEdit doesn't open, it might be a munged prefs
file. Try doing something that'll cause it to be
rewritten. Easiest is find home/library/preferences/
com.apple.textedit.plist (or something like that) and
trash it.

There are all kinds of tricks. Some of them work.

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nnager

517 posts since
Feb 15, 2002

2. Dec 26, 2004 4:08 PM

in response to: Pel2na

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

1. It would be helpful to anyone trying to help if you posted what OS version you were using when you saved the files and what OS version you are using now.
2, What version of Office are you using?
3. If you're using Panther, 10.3.x?, you probably are using TextEdit version 1.3. What version of TextEdit did you have when you saved the documents?
4. DataViz makes software called MacLink Plus Deluxe. There may be other products like it that also can open documents saved in different formats and interpet them to be read into current applications.
5. Let us know how you're doing in opening your files.

Respectfully, Norm

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Pel2na

3 posts since
Dec 22, 2004

3. Dec 26, 2004 11:18 PM

in response to: albloom

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

I restarted the computer in OS9 and Simple Text said it couldn't open it becuase it couldn't find the application that created it. I found the "com.apple.textedit.plist" and trashed it (incl. Empty Trash") but it made no difference. Any other ideas?

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Pel2na

3 posts since
Dec 22, 2004

4. Dec 26, 2004 11:38 PM

in response to: nnager

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

Norm,

I'm using OSX 10.3.5 and TextEdit 1.3. Also, I'm using Microsoft Office 2004 with Word 11.0. Some of the Document came over from my old Power Mac in RTF (The only way I could get it over) and was then opened with (and as it grew repeatedly saved with) TE 1.3 - until it got stuck. I'm imagining my novel lodged like a chicken bone halfway down my computer's gullet waiting for someone who knows a Cyber-Heimlich Maneuver.

I will check out the MacLink Plus Deluxe. Might Disc Warrior help, or is that too radical?

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albloom

2,182 posts since
Apr 21, 2004

5. Dec 27, 2004 3:16 AM

in response to: Pel2na

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

SimpleText hardly ever says that, does it? The
OS might, if all you did was double-click the
document instead of launching SimpleText and
going through file/open.

Did you try Word's "open" option to "recover
text from any file?"

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berg

645 posts since
Aug 3, 2003

6. Dec 27, 2004 6:29 AM

in response to: Pel2na

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

Just a shot in the dark .. but try opening the document by dragging directly over to the text edit application ... and try the same thing with word ...

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dcpics

834 posts since
Feb 6, 2004

7. Dec 27, 2004 7:25 AM

in response to: Pel2na

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

Don't know if this is a TE program corruption or the file got too big.

I'm not sure with TE, but I rememberr SimpleText would have trouble if the file was very large.

You may go for yet another text program made for lots of text such as BBEdit used to write HTML. I've had luck with looking at some web programming that SimpleText would say was too large with BBEdit.

Also, you can try the Word Open File and select RTF format to see if that brings any of it up.

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Naphtali

1,019 posts since
Aug 12, 2001

8. Dec 27, 2004 8:21 AM

in response to: Pel2na

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

1. SimpleText will almost certainly not open a 50-page Tex-Edit file, regardless how it's saved because of a byte limit of 32K.

2. I assume you have done all the routine things -- deleted Tex-Edit preferences; made a copy of the file via OPTION-drag; copied to another disk, reinstalled Tex-Edit.

3. I assume you have run Disk Warrior and TechTool Pro, from a different drive, on the drive that contains problem file.

4. I assume you have no back-up drive, or any kind of back-up system in place. (For reference, if you have no back-up drive, can't afford one, send the text file to your E-mail address. Let the server warehouse a back-up.)
*****
Your best bet for getting anything useful from the file is to start with a pristine drive (See #3). Reinstall Tex-Edit. Then try opening file two ways. First is conventional double-click/Command-O. Second is more desperation. Hold down OPTION KEY and double-click. This allows Tex-Edit to open nearly anything.
*****
I strongly suspect you are experiencing what T.E. Lawrence experienced. And you know he had to write Seven Pillars of Wisdom a second time.

Hope you solve your problem.

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berg

645 posts since
Aug 3, 2003

9. Dec 27, 2004 8:53 AM

in response to: Pel2na

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

I would next try updating to 10.3.7

Repair disk if you haven't done it in a while before updating
Plus repair permissions before and after...

Repair Disk and Permissions

These steps will check for, and usually repair, any corruption on your OS X boot volume

(1) Boot from your Mac OS X Install Disc 1 CD. Put CD in drive, wait for it to show up on the desktop, then go to upper left of screen under the Apple menu and choose restart. Immediately hold the "c" key down until you see the apple logo.

(2) When the Installer window opens, select Installer > Disk Utility from the Apple menu bar.

(3) When the Disk Utility window opens, select "Macintosh HD" in the list on the left.

(4) Select the First Aid tab on the right

(5) Select the "Repair Disk" button on the lower right of the screen.
If errors are returned repeat this process 2 or 3 times untill they are gone.

If you still get errors then you will need to use a third-party disk utility to repair your Mac OS X boot volume, such as Alsoft Disk Warrior

(6) After Repair Disk completes, quit Disk Utility. Focus returns to Installer.

(7) Quit the Installer. When prompted select Restart.

Next:

Repair permissions: Close all files and applications on the disk you want to repair. Go to Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and double click it. Then select "Macintosh HD" in the left panel and First Aid at the top. Then click on "Repair Permissions."

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nnager

517 posts since
Feb 15, 2002

10. Dec 27, 2004 11:13 AM

in response to: Pel2na

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

In reply to:<hr />
Might Disc Warrior help, or is that too radical?

<hr />

DiskWarrior 3.0.2 is an excellent utility, as is TechTool Pro 4.0.3. I use both. DW and TTP are worth trying. And if you don't already have them, you'll find them valuable in diagnosing, fixing and preventing problems. The current version of Word is 11.1, a free update from 11.0. The current OS is 10.3.7. Respectfully, Norm

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DChord568

18 posts since
Oct 30, 2004

11. Jan 6, 2005 9:48 PM

in response to: Pel2na

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

This is just a shot in the dark, but in the past I've had success recovering text from corrupted files using two old OS 9 utilities: Retrieve It! and Can Opener.

I've used Retrieve It! more often. It has a menu option called "Peek in any file" that will usually show you the raw text even in corrupted files that won't open in any application. You can then copy the text and paste it into something new.

The fact that your novel was originally in TextEdit hopefully means there's not a lot of weird formatting applied to it (as there would be in Word, for example), so there won't be too many strange characters getting in the way.

Of course, you'll have to reformat all of the text -- special characters such as dashes or curly quotes may show up weird, or you may lose paragraphs, etc.

But if you can lay hands on either one of these utilities, they're worth a shot if all else has failed. (If you can't find them, send me a private message.)

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macnuke

6,658 posts since
Mar 5, 2004

12. Jan 7, 2005 4:48 AM

in response to: Pel2na

Re: My novel is being held prisoner

hope your problem is solved.
if it isn't, another handy application is BBedit . the few times I (read mostly thekids) have had similiar problems, I have used BBedit to open the doc.. pretty decent word processor and isn't as picky about opening strange documents, then allowing you to save it in a more useful format. the lite version is free i do believe.

luck
m

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