MonkeyJam

[RTFM]

Hi all,

Bit of a problem that I wonder if anyone else has had experience with.

A couple of students have come to the IT team and said their work has 'converted' into monkeyjam format and now wont open.

The work was has always originally been in microsoft word and they claim it has 'converted' and I can't seem to get it back to the originaly.

Now, I have been trying to read up a little on this and i wonder if the following sounds plausible;

The students have worked in Office 2007 at home (we have 2003 with a compatibility pack in school), saved the work as a 2007 document so it has saved as a .docx, monkeyjam uses a format of .xps

Is it possible that a .docx is being opened in .xps because 2007 isnt installed on the machines and it isnt recognising 2003 as its inherent programme to open with?

Thanks a lot for any advice which may be given.

Cheers


Quick Edit; If you do a right click on the file, open with, Microsoft Word 2003 it doesnt work, just comes up with a load of symbols that mean nothing.

[TheLibrarian]

Can the students clarify the procedure they used to 'convert' their work?

Ask one of them to show you exactly what they did to mangle the document.

[mac_shinobi]

if you open said document with open office - open office has a good repair feature - does that help ?

[RTFM]

Can the students clarify the procedure they used to 'convert' their work?

Ask one of them to show you exactly what they did to mangle the document.

They havent converted it, thats the thing, they say they have opened their H drive and it has a monkeys face there and when you try open it its a monkeyjam file not a word file.....its very annoying!.

[RTFM]

if you open said document with open office - open office has a good repair feature - does that help ?

I hadnt thought to try the repair function in Word 2003 actually.....will give that a go and see if anything happens, if not will look into the open office repair function!

[mac_shinobi]

I hadnt thought to try the repair function in Word 2003 actually.....will give that a go and see if anything happens, if not will look into the open office repair function!

That or make a copy of the file as a backup then rename file ext to .html so its a webpage and see if you can extract much info from the word doc that way.

Has the monkey jam software got a link to a website - just wondering if they have an FAQ or maybe when its in a monkey jam format if you can use monkey jam to save it back to how it was or in a format at least word can use. The same with Microsoft Works documents.

[BHMS]

They might have printed the document using XPS document writer. This would have made an XPS document with the same filename. I'm guessing .xps files are associated with MonkeyJam on the machines they are using.

[RTFM]

They might have printed the document using XPS document writer. This would have made an XPS document with the same filename. I'm guessing .xps files are associated with MonkeyJam on the machines they are using.

If so wouldnt the original they printed from still be in its original format? Like i said in my original post, i wasnt sure how plausible it was that they had potentially done the work at home on word 2007 and then monkeyjam was somehow associating that file type.

Am going to try get some time this today to have a play around with the above repair suggestions and see what I can work out.

Thanks all

[RTFM]

Has the monkey jam software got a link to a website - just wondering if they have an FAQ or maybe when its in a monkey jam format if you can use monkey jam to save it back to how it was or in a format at least word can use. The same with Microsoft Works documents.

I've been on their website but their FAQ is frankly c**p.

I've sent an e-mail to the contact detail on the site but whether that gets through, gets read or gets replied to i have no idea.

Reading up on MonkeyJam is appears to be some sort of animation software that some of the ICT teachers use with younger students i think.....not 100% sure though tbh.

[BHMS]

Yes the original file should still be wherever they left it if they printed it to XPS.

[contink]

They havent converted it, thats the thing, they say they have opened their H drive and it has a monkeys face there and when you try open it its a monkeyjam file not a word file.....its very annoying!.

Erm... Can I ask... Have they tried opening the file from Word 2007 using the File > Open > "filename"

... instead of just double clicking on the file directly and opening the file using, what appears to be, a redirected file association.

You may find the files actually open fine and all you need to fix is the file association for that extension

[TheLibrarian]

Is it possible that a .docx is being opened in .xps because 2007 isnt installed on the machines and it isnt recognising 2003 as its inherent programme to open with?

I don't think it's to do with 2007 not being installed, however someone / something could have messed up the file type association.

Initially you would check that by opening Word and then File menu to open the file.

If the file is still an uncorrupt .DOCX then you can rename the file to a .ZIP file and open the container to get at the individual parts.
It's a bit messy, but you could then get the text back out of the document.xml file and images from the media folder.

If of course it doesn't unzip, then the file it (AFAIK) completely dead.

[RTFM]

Will give all this a go, I just need to find one of the problematic files again! Needle, Haystack.....

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

[contink]

Oh and final suggestion... Installing the compatibility pack for Office 2007 so that Office 2003 can open the 2007 files probably wouldn't hurt either...

As for the needle... burn the haystack down.. much easier

[mac_shinobi]

Oh and final suggestion... Installing the compatibility pack for Office 2007 so that Office 2003 can open the 2007 files probably wouldn't hurt either...

As for the needle... burn the haystack down.. much easier

strong magnet