when I open any email text-based attachments, (On the rare occasions I can open them!) i get pages, and pages, and pages of the following sort of gobbledeygook:-

wpý5Nˆ¶™ \ C : \ W I N D O W S \ P r o f i l e s M y D o c u m e n t s \ K e y N o t e s J u l y 2 0 0 6 . d o c  \ C : \ W I N D O W S \ P r o f i l e s \ M y D o c u m e n t s \ K e y N o t e s 1 st J u l y . d o c  E d w a r d \ C : \ W I N D O W S \ P r o f i l e s M y D o c u m e n t s \ J u l y 2 0 0 6 . d o c  \ C : \ W I N D O W S \ P r o f i l e s \ M y D o c u m e n t s \ K e y N o t e J u l y 2 0 0 6 . d o c < STݶ €ú ˜ 2 0 €ú ˜ 2 0 €ú ˜ 2 0 €ú ˜ 2 0 €ú ˜ 2 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜  0 €ú ˜  0
€ú ˜  0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜  0 €ú ˜  0
€ú ˜  0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜  0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 €ú ˜  0 €ú ˜  0
€ú ˜ 0 € €˜ 0 € €˜ 0 €ú ˜ 0 € €š@ 0 € €˜@ 0 € €˜@ 0 € €
0      
ì Á% 1 81   # % (  ú o ˆ Œ õ é% ˜* 1 81   ! " $ & ' )  71       !• !@cÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ADð&²ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ omè7´Fnÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ C29‚†¶ôÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 3E§;´Fnÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ =BNȲÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ > zB ›xÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ M~Cºã¤<ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ˆjØGL´V@ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ×êGpn�ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ï×I€’T¬ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ w\íIjº®"ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ s)²K¶ @cÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ Ç= LÔ]Z�ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ãy6L�lÌâÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ðNˆ$aÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ X$OLrjäÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ

which I have to wade through, and delete, before I can begin to read, and make sense of, the document. (I get thirty or forty pages of this garbage, for maybe one page-worth of the actual text)

Can anyone explain to me why this is happening? (NB I have to open the docs in notepad, BTW, as word doesn't seem to work. Could this be the key to the problem?)

thnk you in advance for help and suggestions.

PT

Others may give you a more technical explanation, but I think your email program is trying to read a Word document as if it was plain text.

If your email program offers you the option of Viewing or opening the attachment, try both options and one of them may work. Else, download the attachment onto your hard disc and open it within Word.

thanks for your help, Graham, will have a look at that! :)

OK, an edit, had a look, the three options it gives me is to open the doc with

avant (my browser for the 'net)
Notepad
or winzip executable.

does that make any sense?
TIA

PT

Hi PT

Firstly, do you have Microsoft Word on your computer? You said 'word doesn't seem to work' - does it work from the Start menu?

If you do have Word (and it works!), find a .doc file on your disk using Windows Explorer. Right click on it. On the Open With... menu, as well as the options you mentioned, do you have Choose Program... ? If you do, then click that, choose Word from the list and tick 'Always use this program to open this type of file'. If you don't get the option to Choose Program, try holding down the shift key and right-clicking. Do you get the option then?

If you don't have Word, can you follow the steps above and select WordPad (not Notepad!) to open .doc files with?

If these suggestions don't help, let us know which bit goes wrong. It'll give some more clues.

ok,thanks for your help, graham and maggi!,

she laughs nervously.. (LOL)

I had word on my computer, (and office, too!) but it (they) seem to have totally disappeared off my start menu.

(my mouse went whappy, a few months ago, and since then a lot of stuff seems to have vanished)


I have found, with a search, two files on my c-drive, one called
w'pad EXE, and the other
w'pad INF.

don't know if these are the progs I need, and how to make them work...

Unfortunately, the progs like office and "works" were pre-loaded on the PC , and AFAIK, i don't have a disk with word etc on it. and to cap it all (she fumed) I don't even have a number I can use, to put it back on using someone else's disk. (I don't know if that's legitimate, even!)

help???

P *talk about blonde!!! lol* T

Unfortunately, the progs like office and "works" were pre-loaded on the PC , and AFAIK, i don't have a disk with word etc on it.

Download and install OpenOffice:thumbsup:.

thanks for your help, Graham, will have a look at that! :)

OK, an edit, had a look, the three options it gives me is to open the doc with

avant (my browser for the 'net)
Notepad
or winzip executable.

does that make any sense?
TIA

PT

If Winzip is offered as an app to open the file with it suggests the file you have is zipped -, ie compressed in .zip format. Are you sure the attachment is a text file ? What is the file format, - eg - .txt or .doc or .zip ?

In any case unless you're sure the attachment is from someone you trust I would be very wary of opening an email attachment whatever the format.

If it's pretending to be a text file, ie it has the extension .txt then it's obviously a spoof of some kind.