text edit app unresponsive

Click on the open TextEdit window containing the rubbish content. From the TextEdit File menu, select Close. Repeat this with the other empty open TextEdit window. Quit TextEdit.

Clicking the red traffic light in the document title bar does not quit TextEdit. For that, you must formally quit it either by ⌘+Q, or from the TextEdit application menu. In System Preferences : General, it is a good idea to have selected, Close windows when quitting an app.

What encoded text are you referring to? OLK files arising from Microsoft Outlook do have text embedded, but they’re organized as binary data files viewable within Outlook, and these files can potentially be converted into a different format using a third-party tool.

Microsoft has a long history of apps that create and manipulate moderately complicated and variously also proprietary file formats. This then leads to the use of third-party tools to translate or convert that data into other non-Microsoft formats, as Microsoft doesn’t typically provide data export capabilities.

TextEdit is not a tool that will operate particularly usefully with an Outlook data file. You might be able to get at a text mail attachment with TextEdit, depending on exactly how Outlook stores that.

If this is not an Outlook-related file you’re working with, as the same file types can sometimes have different uses...

What sort of data do you think (or know) is in this OLK file? Outlook data?

What’s your overarching goal for this OLK file? Clearly, viewing that data is involved, but what sort of data, and what sort of display?

What do you think TextEdit will be able to do with the data that is in this OLK file?

Why are you using TextEdit to view this OLK file, and not some other tool

If you “do not knoe what the files are”, then what do you think is in the files? Unknown?

If the files are in some app-related directory path, does that provide a clue?

If you’re not sure, there are some command-line level tools that can potentially identify the format of the contents. The usual command there is file, followed by the full path to the file to check. That'll be performed at the command line, after launching Terminal.app. The other approach is dumping the file—which is the approach closest to what seemed to be the goal with using TextEdit.app —but dumping and reversing a file format is a little involved for a forum-based discussion. And that reversing usually starts with the file command.

If you’re on macOS Catalina as implied by the forum choice, what you’re reporting here is pretty common with somebody that had an old Microsoft Office version around; Office 2011 or earlier. Those are 32-bit apps and don't work on Catalina, and files that had expected to be accessed with those or other 32-bit apps can revert to some other and ill-suited app. OLK-message related file names are pretty commonly part of Office and Outlook, though that's probably not the only use of OLK-based names around.

Force-quit TextEdit, if it’s stuck. To force-quit, control-click on the TextEdit app icon in the Dock, and select Force Quit from the pop-up menu.

Then don’t use TextEdit with files that are not text files.

Mixing TextEdit on non-text files won’t have a happy outcome for your apps and your data. Corruptions can ensue.

Imagine blaming a pair of reading glasses for an English reader’s problems reading a book written in Spanish, because the text is not written in English. The reading glasses don’t change the language that the book is written in. The reading glasses here being TextEdit.

And as mentioned, the red button doesn’t do what you think it does. You’ll want to select ⌘Q (the command Q chord) to quit the app.

You can get out of the endless enigma by pressing and holding the shift key when relaunching TextEdit — after every force quit. This prevents it from reloading its last saved state, and then once opened, you can follow my steps above if the windows appear.

Could you elaborate on what you’re trying to do, what commands or sequences or clicks you’re using, and with which file or document you’re trying to edit?

OLK file types are used by Microsoft Office apps. Specifically Outlook. That's not something I’d expect to mix well with TextEdit.

+1.