Not sure if this is right place for this question.
Had a lappy running 10.3 copied a load of folders n files to a dvd with k3b a couple of months ago, most were .docs created in OOo. Changed jobs recently, 10.3 lappy was company property so was wiped and reverted to company standard XP pro.
Now on a brand new lappy running 11 trying to access the docs on the dvd file structure is there files are all showing as M$ Word docs but Open Office just gives the ascii import dialog and they open as gobbledegook. Other non .docs open as binarys also gobbledegook.
So now to the £64 question, is there anything I can do to retrive the docs or am I stuffed?
once you burned the .docs to the dvd, were you able to open them with
the laptop you burned them from, using that laptop’s OpenOffice?
did you ever notice that note when you try to save a document in a MS
format with OpenOffice?
says something like “This document may contain formatting or content
that cannot be saved in the Microsoft Word 6.0 file format. Do you want
to save the document in this format anyway? Click 'Yes* to save in MS
blah, blah. Click 'No* to use the latest OpenDocument file format and be
sure all formatting and content is saved correctly.”
on that old company laptop, did you click yes or no? could have a direct
bearing on how usable those files are not…huh?
as you say, you may be “stuffed”, most likely self-stuffed for 1) not
saving in a usable format and 2) not testing the dvd’s usefulness prior
to turning loose of that machine…
chalk it up to learning the hard way…we all do it…
on the other hand, perhaps there is some trick another can point you
to…hope so!
–
DenverD (Linux Counter 282315)
A Texan in Denmark
Guilty as charged, I didn’t check after burning, one lesson learnt.
yes I did see the warning about saving as .doc but in a entirely M$ office apart from me I had no choice and all the .docs had been in use for at least a few months. Secondly although it is the .docs I want to open it is all files on the disk, Konversation log files .xls .odt all are unreadable.
> Guilty as charged, I didn’t check after burning, one lesson learnt.
same way i learned…
> yes I did see the warning about saving as .doc but in a entirely M$
> office apart
i know…it is all over like that…
one thing you might try if you get into that situation again is:
always save YOUR copy in OO.o format…then, you print and hand’em
paper…or save to an web page and post on the company’s internal
site…or, if you really must send them digits, do a save as to a MS
format and mail it to them…and HOPE they can read it…i have OFTEN
seen that folks can read it just fine [and can not explain why your CD
is useless…except it is]
[and, another thing you can do is mention during the next budget meeting
the per chair cost of M$-Office vs OpenOffice!]
> from me I had no choice and all the .docs had been in use
> for at least a few months. Secondly although it is the .docs I want to
> open it is all files on the disk, Konversation log files .xls .odt all
> are unreadable.
don’t chunk it yet!! maybe someone here knows how to coax the data you
need off that dvd…there IS something about dvd file systems, and
file permissions and whatever that i don’t understand…MAYBE a guru
can teach you how to hold your mouth JUST right, and see your docs again…
good luck!!
–
DenverD (Linux Counter 282315)
A Texan in Denmark
>
> Guilty as charged, I didn’t check after burning, one lesson learnt.
>
> yes I did see the warning about saving as .doc but in a entirely M$
> office apart from me I had no choice and all the .docs had been in use
> for at least a few months. Secondly although it is the .docs I want to
> open it is all files on the disk, Konversation log files .xls .odt all
> are unreadable.
>
>
What program was used to write the DVD? Was the DVD ‘closed’? Often, the
file pointers are not ‘finalized’ until the media is closed or finalized.
Entirely possible to try to close DVD with k3b or by hand using some of the
dvd utils.
A thought: DVD’s are ‘special’ and use a UDF format rather than iso9660
like CD’s. UDF does allow packet-writing, which can
perform ‘write-on-the-fly’ and ‘appending data’.
From the ‘growisofs’ man page:
To Finalize the multisession DVD maintaining maximum compatibility:
growisofs -M /dev/dvd=/dev/zero
Of course, if it was burned on a windows machine, ‘closing’ the disc with
the same windows-based program should suffice too.
Many DVD’s will not read properly (due to head/laser calibration issues)
unless there was at least 1GB of data written. No idea how much you’ve got
tangled up in .docs (although 1GB of .docs would be amazing!). Could try
adding more data to the DVD if it was ‘short’. (again, with previously used
program)
Hope this helps.
Oh, and “trying it before you continue on” isn’t always a good thing unless
you try it on ANOTHER machine. DVD’s and CD’s written on windows machines
using packet-writing software (the usual ‘treat a disc like a floppy’
programs for windows), are not finalized until told to do so… placing the
disc in THAT machine, will work, due to mysterious forces. Checking on
another machine ensures it’s readable.
It’s tedious but Kate will open binary files; you cannot save them but you can scroll through them until you get to the text and copy and paste it as UTF8 into another Kate file in order to save it.
I’ve used this technique with quite a lot of ‘foreign’ file formats and been able to get the text that way and I’ve just tried it with an MS .doc text file that someone sent me at the weekend and it worked. It needs tidying up now but it’s not gobbledegook - it just needs formating.
An option if nothing else works though, if the text comes up corrupt in Kate, I would assume the problem was in the writing of the docs, not in the reading.
>
> It’s tedious but Kate will open binary files; you cannot save them but
> you can scroll through them until you get to the text and copy and
> paste it as ASCII into another Kate file in order to save it.
>
> I’ve used this technique with quite a lot of ‘foreign’ file formats and
> been able to get the text that way and I’ve just tried it with an MS
> .doc text file that someone sent me at the weekend and it worked. It
> needs tidying up now but it’s not gobbledegook - it just needs
> formating.
>
> An option if nothing else works though, if the text comes up corrupt in
> Kate, I would assume the problem was in the writing of the docs, not in
> the reading.
>
>
A (slightly) easier way to extract the text from a garbled or corrupted file
(and .doc’s too!) is thus: (from a console/konsole)
strings ickyfile.ext > newfile.txt
By default, strings only extracts runs of 4 characters or more, the ‘-n’
option can be used to adjust this to try to recover the shorter words (the,
act, etc)
strings -n 2 ickyfile.ext > newfile.txt
Pulls everything 2 chars long or more.
Of course, ‘newfile.txt’ will need to be inspected and cleaned up, but it’s
easier to read and reformat using kate than to extract it as well.