word documents appear as "unix executable files" and cannot be opened

I was having this problem too. I had installed a new harddrive on my Macbook Pro and then reinstalled 10.5.6. When I connected to our server at work, all the fonts and any file that did not have an extension changed to the Unix Executable icon/file format. I tried everything in this discussion and some other solutions on different websites with no luck. I called our external IT guy and had him look at it. He figured out that I was connecting to our server using SNB (Windows File Sharing) rather than Appletalk. That was the reason none of the additional (Mac) file data was showing up on the font files.

*To fix this:*
Click the "Go" menu in the Finder,
Click Connect to Server
Change the IP Address of the server from snb://192.168.555.55 (whatever your server's ip address is ) to afp://192.168.555.55 (whatever your server's ip address is)
Click Connect
The change from snb to afp switches you to Appletalk. When you reconnect to the server, all the Mac data will return and your fonts, files etc will work right.

Not sure how this affects items on your harddrive. I am no IT guy so take this with a grain of salt.

It might be the case that the Word files have the executable bit set in the POSIX permissions.

Try this. Open a Terminal window, and type:

cd (hit spacebar, drag into the Terminal window the folder that contains the .doc files, press return)

chmod -x *.doc

That will remove the executable bit from all files in that folder with the .doc extension. See if that fixes it up.

Do you have a copy of TextWrangler? If not you can download it--it is free from Bare Bones.

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

I had determinedly tried to wreck a file, which was very small, and contained a minimal amount of formatting information (basically, just a particular font). It persisted in being opened correctly in Word and TextEdit. I opened it in TextWrangler, which would open it and display the sort of thing you would see in a hex editor, that is every thing encoded in the file, but in a more readily readable form. Here's what it looks like:

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf949\cocoasubrtf350
{\fonttbl\f0\froman\fcharset0 TimesNewRomanPSMT;}
{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;}
\vieww9000\viewh9600\viewkind0
\deftab709
\pard\pardeftab709\ql\qnatural\pardirnatural

\f0\fs24 \cf0 This was a Neo office document. I'm trying to mess it up.\
}

You can see that it was originally in rtf form, with TimesNewRoman as the font. The actual text is the simple statement: This was a Neo office document. I'm trying to mess it up.

You might try downloading TextWrangler, then drop one of the smaller files on to it and see what you get.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

Try the file command like mine, but substitute your user name, etc. and then hit return.
file /Users/dougp/Desktop/manual-0-3.doc and this is what I get after the return:
/Users/dougp/Desktop/manual-0-3.doc: Microsoft Office Document
See if that sheds any light.

They haven't "turned into" anything--the Finder, absent any information from a resource fork, is making a best guess about what the file is based on the information the file provides, which is evidently very little. If something does not have a resource fork (and it won't if it has been moved around in various ways, including being shipped over the Internet or a trip to a FAT32 drive), and does not have an extension, but does have the executable bit set, Finder figures it must be a UNIX excutable and slaps the UNIX icon on it. If you try to open by double clicking, Finder will open the Terminal, Terminal will not see a proper command and either do nothing or open a new window with an error message. Generally speaking, adding the correct extension back to a file will fix it. Thus, I have a plain text file that was missing the .txt extension and for unknown reasons has the executable bit set (why some perfectly ordinary files get executable bits and others, quite properly, do not, is a mystery to me). Adding the .txt extension caused Finder to immediately slap the text preview icon on the file, and double clicking opened it in TextEdit.

I took a perfectly harmless plain text file, made it executable and removed its extension. The Finder of course then saw it as a UNIX executable file. While it is in this lamentable state, dropping it on the TextEdit icon will open it just fine.

Things get a bit more complex for a file that contains formatting information. You can still open it in TextEdit (which will open pretty much any file that contains text), but you may see the formatting information as "gobblety gook"--the actual text will still be in there and you can get it out as plain text, but all formatting is gone, it is the formatting that is displaying as ASCII characters instead of functioning as instructions to the program on how the text should be displayed. I suspect files that behave this way have been damaged/corrupted. I just took a .doc file, removed its extension, it opened just fine in Word and TextEdit. I then made it executable, it still opened just fine and even displayed a correct custom thumb in Finder. Determined to wreck it, I then stripped its resource fork. Finally it displayed the UNIX executable icon, but when dropped on either Word or TextEdit it again opened just fine. I even used a hex editor to go into the data fork of the file and remove the note that it was a Word file, but it STILL persists in opening correctly when dropped on either Word or TextEdit! So I'm not sure just how your doc files are getting damaged, but I'm sure that they are.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

This is the iWeb forum. You should post your question in the Leopard forum. But I'll give a try at a possible solution:

1 - check the Finder preferences and make sure you have the option to show file extensions checked.
2 - select one of the Work files, type Command+i and in the Info window go to the Open With menu and select Word as the default application. Then click on the Apply to All... button.

OT

Have these files been stored on a FAT formatted disk? Try use an app like Name Mangler to rename them to include the .doc suffix.

Regards

TD

Try changing extension to .rtf.

Right-click the file and select, "Open With" then select "Other" and browse to Word and select it.
Does that work?

Well, I'm interested because something similar has been happening to me. I keep all my old emails archived as text files, some of them going back 10 years or more, and for some reason, some of them have converted themselves into Unix files that are only gobbledegook when I open them. This seems to be happening at random. I'm wondering if there is some sort of time limitation, after when like Cinderella at midnight, all of my files are suddenly going to turn into unreadable Unix pumpkins.....?

This may seem like a dumb suggestion but....have you tried simply adding .doc to the end of each file, by typing it yourself? This works sometimes.

As I say, and indeed Tom in London also says, have you tried re-attaching a .doc suffix?

Regards

TD