Problem reading .doc file in LibreOffice 3.5.3.2

[emmrecs]

I have been sent a Word 97-2003 document. It is the final Mark Scheme for an examination (instructions for examiners) and so is confidential and cannot be posted anywhere for any other user to look at, unfortunately!

It is created by inserting text into a preset, pre-formatted table. When opened in LO 3.5.3.2 a document of 14 sides (A4, portrait) becomes 20 sides. More seriously, the answer “table/grid” for one particular question appears once on each of five successive pages and the next question does not appear at all! I have checked and repeated the problem on two different computers, one running Win 7 and one running XP Pro.

Any ideas why and, more importantly, how to resolve this problem?

Thanks.

[mariosv]

Without see the document, I think for anyone is near to impossible to see what is happen. You can for example, replace all letters in the document with ‘x’, to avoid the confidentiality.

[qubit1]

Per @emmrecs comment under Pedro’s Answer, it appears that this problem has been resolved:

Further to the above: I have come to the conclusion the original .doc file is corrupted. I have a print-out of it made at the office where it was created; this has layout errors. Thanks to Pedro for taking the time to reply in detail.

[Pedro1]

It should not be related to Windows version but could be affected by LibreOffice version (sometimes regressions slip in).

I would advise you to try the conservative version 3.4.6
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/?nodetect

If that shows the same errors try the final release of the original 3.3.x branch
http://ftp.uni-muenster.de/pub/software/DocumentFoundation/libreoffice/stable/3.3.4/

You can try the portable version of 3.3.4 if you don’t feel like installing it
http://ftp.uni-muenster.de/pub/software/DocumentFoundation/libreoffice/portable/3.3.4/

Please report back your findings

[emmrecs]

Many thanks for this detailed response. I tried each of the steps in turn (uninstall current version, install 3.4.6 - no change - uninstall 3.4.6, install 3.3.4 - no change.

[emmrecs]

Further to the above: I have come to the conclusion the original .doc file is corrupted. I have a print-out of it made at the office where it was created; this has layout errors. Thanks to Pedro for taking the time to reply in detail.