MS Word 2003 Error While Opening document

Problem: A user reported that she couldn't open a Word document that other users in her group could open without a problem. She was running Office 2003; some of the others were also running Office 2003, but at least one person was running Office 2000. When she attempted to open the document, she got the following error:

Word experienced an error trying to open the file. Try these suggestions.

* Check the file permissions for the document or drive.

* Make sure there is sufficient free memory and disk space.

* Open the file with the Text Recovery converter.

Of course none of the suggestions worked. In fact, when we tried the Text Recovery, it recovered the text all right, but none of the graphics that were previously in the document were "recovered". This effectively corrupted the file for the whole work group.

Solution: As it turns out, it was a known problem, fixed by Microsoft KB828041, which is a critical update included in Office 2003 Service Pack 1. (Office 2003 SP1 was obviously not on this machine). You can read the article at your leisure, but it had to do with editing the document (in this case, editing a graphic) with a previous version of Word and then using the document with Office 2003.

Moral: Before spending too much time on problems with Office, make sure all the Office updates are applied ..... :o)