Word doc file conversion error - virus or OS?

XP is no longer secure, unless you are paying Microsoft for updates. You should update to at minimum Vista.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2741

explains why.

If you brought the files over to Mac OS X before April 8, 2014, it may not be a problem. But after it could be.

There is absolutely no chance that your XP system in Parallels could have damaged Word docs on your Mac, no matter how badly infected that XP system might be.

If these are all very old Word files that haven't been opened in a very long time, it's possible they are simply no longer compatible with recent versions of Word. I had some very old Word documents at one point, created in pre-OS X days, that couldn't be opened by modern versions of Word. It's been a number of years now, so I don't remember how I opened them... perhaps OpenOffice or something like that? I no longer even have a copy of Microsoft Office.

This is probably something you'll get better results asking about on the Office for Mac forums.

Alternately, if these aren't really old files, it's possible these files are simply corrupt. Do you have Time Machine backups? If so, try restoring older versions of those files and see if you can open those.

The ones with no file extension I think are a legacy from an older OS version that was not as strict on having them.

Nothing to do with strict naming conventions. OS 9 and earlier kept track of what file belonged to what app by the hidden Type and Creator code held in each file's resource fork. There were no file extensions. While Apple dropped all Type and Creator code use starting in Snow Leopard (and third party vendors aren't supposed to use them either), OS X can still read them to try and figure out what app an older file should be opened in.

Office 2011 may be having trouble opening the files with a file extension if they were created in Microsoft Works. Nobody knows why MS ever created these two incompatible standards, but they did. A Word file created in Works generally will not open in Office. Not even in Windows.

If these files were created in Word 2008 or later, they should be openable.

I'm a bit surprised that the files with no extension are opening fine while the ones with an extension are not. I would have expected the other way around. Note that ALL these files should have an extension at this point, even if it is hidden. The ones that don't have one need to have an appropriate extension added.

One possibility... might these files be the newer .docx files, rather than .doc? There is a big difference between those two file formats, and if Word is making assumptions based on the extension, it's possible that it's getting hung up on the fact that the file format doesn't match the .doc extension. I believe that .docx was the default format used by Word 2008 and newer, so I would think that they are probably .docx files... in which case, a simple extension change might be all that's needed.

Good thought, but incorrect. I have dozens of old Word documents created in Word for MS-DOS, and later Word for Windows. All open without issue in Office 2011 for Mac.

Still couldn't tell you why they won't open, though. If you feel there's no issue with personal data being seen by others, send me any one document that won't open to:

retoucher at jklstudios dot com

I'd just like to see what's going on, if possible.

If you've already sent a document, please try again as it must have gotten trapped and deleted by Spam Assassin. I've temporarily disabled all email sifting so the next try can get through.

Thanks. Got it that time. Now to see what, if anything, is going on.

The one you sent is all binary data, which if you drop it into TextEdit to try and find any kind of clear text, all you get is a lot of apparent garbage like this:

†èJ m—ÈÇyít◊Hw[i∑n TÉ;?Ô8flu#”÷‰®áÜ3±ˇ˚ò∏uÇÒ !π∂3 ˇΩËÑ^!¥ZÔ*

Don't know what happened to these files, but they are definitely not Word documents anymore.

Do you still have access to the Windows files they were originally from? If so, I'd try to access them there and see if you can save them out again.

These files were usable with no issues until a Microsoft Office update, or maybe a Lion update, in late 2013 made the word docs with a native "PC-ness" unusable.

I can't think of any update that would cause such a drastic change to your files, but something clearly did if they were working before.