I ran across some old doc files I'd like to keep in a modern format.
Some of these are .wfw and even .sam files! We're talking vintage 1992
here. The .wfw and .sam files open sweetly in word 2003. but I have
other files that don't open well.

They have no extension but are probably not Mac files, since there is
no resource fork. When I try to open some of them, Word pops up a file
conversion dialog, and asks me what encoding scheme I want to use. If
I choose US-ASCII, they open perfectly. 

But most of them don't prompt word to ask me this. If I try to open
them in Notepad, I get one-third english, two thirds garbage.

Is there a way I can force word to open them as US-ASCII? Is there a
utility or app that will let me open these docs in this US-ASCII
encoding?

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 09 Feb 2005 18:53 PST

Have you tried viewing the files with "preview" function under the Open Files menu?


If not, give it a try and let us know what happens.  If they can
routinely open up in the viewer, then you can probably use the viewer
itself -- or some free standing viewer software -- to access your
files.

Let us know.


pafalafa-ga

I don't think there is a generic solution to your issue.
Different applications will have structured the content of their files
in different ways, even to the extent of compressing the data, or
otherwise making it other than plain text.  Word itself maintains a
god-awful hodge-podge of bizarre data inside its documents - they are
very far from plain text and if they were opened as ASCII, you would
get garbage too.

Without the original application, or a specific filter for that
application's files built into a current application, your chances of
recovering the document content intact are poor.

That Notepad produces garbage for some indicates that the content is
NOT plain text, ASCII encoded or otherwise.

Your best bet may be to extract what text you can with notepad or
another low-level file editing tool and paste it into whatever new
file you like.

Hopefully, some expert here will be able to see a simple solution for
this that has escaped me.