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Document name or path invalid

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7 replies

by tman12

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In MS Word 2002, I am getting the error message "The document name or path is invalid" on certain documents. I seem to be able to open them on another identical system, but am having problems with one particular system. I have tried all of the solutions found on Microsoft's website with no luck. The documents do not conatain any web links or special fonts. I have even uninstalled and reinstalled Word. Any suggestions?

7 replies

by bobho

If you can open some docs but not others then it sounds like a corrupted doc. Have you tried this link:

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

There is also a link at the bottom of the above page as to why documents corrupt.One other thing you could try is going to the Help Menu and choose Repair Word. This will fix any registry entries that are corrupted (but I don't think this is applicable if you can open other doc files).

Enjoy,

DrBob:>)

by tman12

If I save the .docs to a floppy, they seem to work fine on both P.C's. Its just when I send them via outlook. It seems that the files are getting corrupted by Outlook. It also seems to be the same files each time, and is not random. I ran the SCANPST.EXE program to see if the .pst files were corrupted, but they checked out ok. I also did an uninstall and reinstall of Outlook by itsef. I even replaced the Normal.dot template to verfiy it was not corrupted. Any suggestions on why some of the meaage attachments are getting corrupted?

by slyde phaeder

It could be that one of the PC's is infected with a virus that infects mail attachments. If virus scanning the computers doesn't reveal a problem, the next step may be to compare the original and mailed file with each other. If the mailed file is shorter, it is probably getting truncated. If the mailed file is larger, it is probably getting infected. If the files are the same size, try using the FC utility to do a binary file comparison from an MS-DOS window.

by bobho

I really don't think that it is your Outlook. Go to any MS Office newsgroup and do a search on corrupted documents and you'll get a ton of hits (some problems just like yours). There don't seem to be any fixes that work for everyone. I would agree that it could be a virus but that is not the only reason that Word will corrupt a document. There have been some reports of certain mail servers causing corruption when the document passes through them when emailing it.

Some of the fixes that have worked for some of the users are:

Turn off Fast Save in Word.
Repair any templates used to create the document .(including Normal.dot - the default).
When emailing, send the email as text only (not rtf).

Like I stated, some of these fixes work for some people but they don't necessarily work for others (and for some no fixes seem to work). Even MS doesn't have an explanation.

You are not alone with your problem but unfortunately there isn't a single fix that seems to resolve the issue.

DrBob:>(

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