Formatting problems with Word2003

The PC is running XP Pro SP3. There's a lot of background here, so bear with me.... a few days ago, the PCs owner claims that a Windows update caused a problem with Word 2003 (or something else; read on), and their documents didn't open correctly after this update, so they installed the Office 2010 trial; again, the documents didn't open correctly. The thing is, when you open My Documents and look at the docs, they're all associated with WORKS and not with Word. When the docs are opened with Works, they don't open correctly. Before the problem started, these documents supposedly were .DOC files and when opened, they were formatted a certain way. For example, one of 'em had 9 rows and 3 columns for a total of 27 boxes; each box had a shipping number in it, and this entire sheet would be printed to sticker paper, cut out, and stuck on boxes. Now when the documents are opened in Word2003 (or Works, or even in Word 2010 trial), there's only one box with a shipping number, and the remaining 26 boxes are empty. I'm thinking this is a simple formatting problem and can be easily set up using one of the tools in Word. But not being an expert in Word, I have no idea how to do it, and neither does the owner of the PC. They use it for their business, and I'm assuming someone else originally created the sheets. Each sheet has a different number of rows and columns (one has 3 rows, 9 columns; one has 4 rows, 12 columns, etc). I think they print out custom shipping labels and other stickers, so they need to be able to fill each box on a given sheet like it was before. When the PC came to me, Office2003 was gone (weird), all the files were associated with Works, and Office2010 trial was installed but not real functional. I think this is what happened: the sheets were originally created with Works. For some reason, the files were opened with a version of Word. When a Works doc is opened in Word, it requires a converter. I think this converter 'knocked out' the formatting information for each sheet, resulting in all the boxes on each sheet to be empty except for the top left corner box. Then installing Office2010 trial on top of this mess mixed it up further.

HELP!

(when speaking with the customer, she kept referring to "Officeworks" (yup, as if it were one word, and as if such a thing existed), "Office", and "Word", like Word and Office were separate entities, and that "Officeworks" was a real program :confused )

(also, please don't say something like "it sounds like this would be easier to set up in Excel since it already is configured with rows and columns; this is not an option; everything was working fine with Word or Works, and now it doesn't; they don't want to start over in Excel; yes, they should have used Excel in the first place, but they didn't)

 

Maybe they used a Template for labels, anything from inside 2003 or MS on line and there are hundreds of them depending on the company that makes them.:confused

 

Ahhhhhhhh yes! Templates! I'll look at that and see if that's the answer! Thanks!

Please, if anyone else has any info, please feel free to post!

 

I decided to attach a screenshot of the situation so it's a bit easier to understand. Yesterday, I kind of rushed in to this and accepted what the customer was telling me about the history of these files. However, today, I see that the files in question are actually .WPS files, and they are NOT Word .DOC files. So I was misinformed by the owner of the PC; I'm sure it was unintentional as it seems they were unable to differentiate between Office, Works, and Word (and Word -as we all should know- is part of Office; it continues to surprise me how many users of Windows and Word do not realize that Word is part of Office, and that Office is NOT a built-in Windows component, but this is getting off topic :-o ). So- these files are actually Works Word Processor files, but the problem is still the same. If we can get the files to work in Word or Works, it doesn't matter, as long as they work!

 

dlb, any way you could load OpenOffice real quick, see if it'll show you anything?

 

I tried OpenOffice and had no luck with it either . . . however, the problem is "solved" (kind of). I got it to where the files would print as they should, but when the files were opened in Works, there would only be the single box like in the screen shot above, but if I clicked on "Print Preview", it showed that each box was filled. Weird. When printed, the printed sheets came out OK. Very weird. I'm not sure what I did (if anything) that "fixed" the issue, and there was a real time crunch, so I wasn't able to do as complete a job as I would have liked, but it was a businesses main PC, and without being able to print these labels, they were dead in the water.... at least now they can print normally even if the files don't visually look right on-screen........

Weird.
:confused

 

Real weird - you might consider you or them coming up with some kind of basic templates anyway, in case the gremlins return..

 

I had made in the past some labeling using templates, printing them in paper that I bought at the dollar store, I made some using Adobe and seems to me that they used a template. If the gremlims comeback, I guess they should do a new template an save it in a memory stick or else.