I have Word X for Mac. Something has corrupted a single file in the
software. When I try to open it from my desktop, a Convert File box
appears and asks whether I want to convert it from Text Only, Unicode
Text, Word (Asian Versions) 6.0 for Macintosh, and so on. Most of them
don't open the file at all; those that do, open it in code. Is there
any way to open the document as it was (even plain text would be 
acceptable)? Any idea what went wrong, and how to prevent it from 
happening again? As always, God bless Microsoft.

You *Might* be able to open it in OpenOffice.org (free at
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html#download),
but it sounds like you may have a file that's a temp file instead of
actual Word.

At a last resort, Word does have the option to get the text-only (an
option like recover text) from a document, although you will
DEFINITELY lose all formatting.

This is a free comment. I hope you get your info.

Another Free Comment...

I haven't used Mac but in Windows, I have been able to extract the
text from my corrupt MS Word file when I open them using Wordpad.
Also, MS Word and even MS Excel file created in 98 / 2000 version can
be safely recovered in Office XP version. I hope you get the data
back.