Converting, Recovering Very Old MS Word Documents

Tech Support
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I have a bunch (over 2000) of very old (circa 1990’s) .doc files. Some of them won’t open in MS Word without repairing or recovering them.

Just wondering if anyone else has come up with a way to batch convert these older files to modern .docx or PDF.

At this point, it seems like I may need to convert them one at a time. :crazy_face:

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We frequently used OpenOffice/LibreOffice to open Word files that more recent versions of MS Word couldn’t. It was my go to program for all kinds of office document problems.

I haven’t used it in a few years but creating a macro to do open & save shouldn’t be too difficult.

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I found this. Caveat emptor.

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Wow! OpenOffice seems like it will do the trick. Now to automate! Thanks, @WayneG!

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I’m currently working on converting a bunch of old MacWrite files using LibreOffice. I never did get the automation to work properly but I can open each one pretty fast using keystrokes, look at it to decide if it’s worth saving and then save with a few Text Expander snippits and a bit of typing into readable files. I’m almost done with this batch. Then I get to go bring in a bunch more archive/backup CDs and check them.

Part of a major project to move all relevant data up to modern formats and then put out on as AWS Glacier archive.

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