Document files appearing blank when they aren't

[Menalaus]

So I recently reformatted and was going through installing all the software. Got Microsoft Office 2010 back on and I was looking through my backed up documents and many of them appear "blank". When I say blank I mean I open them up and nothing is there. The problem is that there is supposed to be something there. The file sizes confirm this--they are not blank. And multiple-paged documents have multiple pages, but all of them appear blank.

This is only happening for files that are listed as ".DOC File"(s). Please help me out here, I have lots of valuable information saved in these many documents.

 

[ninaholic37]

Can you see it if you hit the "Print Preview" button?
How about if you open it from MS-Word itself instead (File -> Open)?
What happens if you save it as a different format, then load it again?

 

[Menalaus]

Can you see it if you hit the "Print Preview" button?

Nope. Nothing.

How about if you open it from MS-Word itself instead (File -> Open)?

Nope.

What happens if you save it as a different format, then load it again?

Saved it as an .rtf file. I opened it up and it showed up with every page full of underlines.

I should also note that it seems completely random as to which files appear blank and which do not. Some .doc files open just fine. At first I thought it had to do with files that were older than four years old but then I looked in other folders of files that were also four years old (or older) and they opened fine as well.

Also, when I say .doc file, I mean they look different from a normal Microsoft Word document. Example:

http://i.imgur.com/1PpRI.jpg

 

[sm625]

Right click these files and click Properties->Summary->Advanced. What do you see that is different between the non-Word .doc and the Word .doc?

 

[Menalaus]

The templates are different. Normal-looking documents are under a "Normal.dotm" template, while the ones that are wonky are under "Normal.dot". It also lists the origin of program name as "Microsoft Word 9.0" instead of "Microsoft Office Word".

 

[Spungo]

Did you touch the files with Open Office by any chance? OO and LibreOffice seem to destroy files.

 

[Menalaus]

I did when trying to open them up on a laptop, but I only tried to open up two documents before realizing I should probably stop because, as you said, it seemed to be "blanking" them. Why would all of these files I never touched with OpenOffice be acting like this?