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General discussion

Corrupt Table in a Word (2002) Document

Mar 2, 2004 4:17AM PST

I have a 100 page document (operations manual), all laid out in tables. As of recently, a box pops up saying that a table has become corrupt and suggests to convert table to text.

Scrolling through, everything looks fine, converting the whole thing severly disturbs the formatting/layout.

Is there any way to find THE corrupt table?

-----It's 100 pages!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Discussion is locked

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Re:Corrupt Table in a Word (2002) Document
Mar 2, 2004 4:51AM PST

Just a tip. Try the usual cure-all for Word before you open that document.

1. Exit Word.
2. Find and rename NORMAL.DOT to NORMAL.OLD
3. Reboot (just to be sure). No OS mentioned, so I added this step.
4. Try again.

Bob

PS. Outside of printing the document, I don't have a means of testing for corruption.

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Re:Re:Corrupt Table in a Word (2002) Document
Mar 2, 2004 5:51AM PST

Sorry - the OS is Windows 2000.

The file is located on a network drive and the error message shows up on more than one computer, so I'm guessing that rebuilding the normal.dot probably would not fix this issue?

I guess I can always start printing a few pages at a time (and will find my issue on page 100, if at all.....)

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(NT) Network or not, the normal.dot cure-all helps many.
Mar 2, 2004 6:48AM PST

.

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(NT) Print preview (in stead of printing) should save 100 pages and a lot of ink.
Mar 2, 2004 6:53AM PST

.

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Another thought. Operations manual should be in PDF
Mar 2, 2004 7:38AM PST

Or a web page even.

I have found a few that tried this with .DOC or Excel sheets and corruption either by oops or other always followed them.

Think about it?

Bob

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Do the 'binary search' method.
Mar 2, 2004 4:30PM PST

Make a copy of the document. Delete pages 1-50. Close and open and see if message appears. If so, it's in page 51-100, of not, it's in page 1-50.

Each iteration goes a factor of two better:
1: 50 possible pages
2: 25 possible pages
3: 13
4: 7
5: 4
6: 2
7: 1

And if after 7 repeats you know which page it's on, you've practically found it.

Kees

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Re:Corrupt Table in a Word (2002) Document
Mar 2, 2004 7:43PM PST

Thanks everyone - I'll check out all your tips when I get to work later.

And R. Profitt - I agree with you about the manual better off in pdf format - I'll suggest that today.

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Thanks Everone for all the Help!
Mar 4, 2004 9:32AM PST

Kees' binary method worked. The corrupt table was on page 8 and it did not show up when printing - glad I did not waste 100 sheets of paper.

And I took Rob's pdf suggestion to the boss, and he agreed it would be a good idea.

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Paginator at the bottom of the screen can also help
Jan 8, 2009 3:54AM PST

I have a similar situation...a 192 pp training document, loaded with tables and graphics. Word just started nicely telling me that I have "a" corrupt table somewhere in the document.

NICE!

The only clue I have to where the corruption lies is when I open the document and Word loads the document up, there's an area where Word appears to 'paginate' the document at the bottom of the screen. (I seem to get the error about the corrupt table once Word hits page 81...

I'm still working on fixing this table, butI thought that little trick might help someone in my situation at least locate the vacinity of the corruption.

Good luck!