Contract Contains Gibberish

Problem

crashes when opening contract in word processor, or gets mystery symbols ÒÒÒÒ gibberish, extra lines, misc garbage, etc. Setting up footer and header text in MacNail construction specifications software for Macintosh and Windows.

Diagnosis

The header/footer that was used probably wasn't saved as a text file.
Ask them which header/footer is where the gibberish occurs, and see if they made changes to it (and don't necessarily believe them even if they say they didn't change it!).

Solution

Make sure custom headers and footers are saved as text, not the word processors own format, or as XL format. To do that, open the file, choose Save As, hit the Options button or otherwise select TEXT format, then Save.

Also make sure that the word processor option was selected from the New Contract Dialog. If you open an Excel format document with a word procesor, it will have all kinds of garbage in it!

NOTE-- The problem here is that most programs add other stuff to their files when they save the data in their own format. We open it as a text file, and the extra info just looks like gibberish. Save As Text options will make it pure text, which MacNail can read OK.

Comments

Entered 6/21/94 by Dennis. Updated 11/25/2010.