how to see encoding of the Word-97 file

[GB]

Hi: any advise on how to see encoding of the Word-97 file would be
appreciated. I need to see the encoding behind the Word document. I
tried opening it with Notepad - it does not recognize many of encoding
characters and thus unhelpful. I tried vi from Linux - similarly,
majority of encoding characters are not recognized. I tried
OpenOffice - but I do not know if it is possible with it and how.
Thankking in advance,
GB

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi: any advise on how to see encoding of the Word-97 file would be
appreciated. I need to see the encoding behind the Word document. I
tried opening it with Notepad - it does not recognize many of encoding
characters and thus unhelpful. I tried vi from Linux - similarly,
majority of encoding characters are not recognized. I tried
OpenOffice - but I do not know if it is possible with it and how.
Thankking in advance,
GB

If you're expecting to see "tags" that say things like "italic starts
here", forget about it -- Word files don't work that way; they're
completely unlike WordPerfect or HTML or RTF. The formatting
information is all binary, located in a "header" section of the file,
with pointers into the text part of the file.

The closest you can get is a product called CrossEyes
(http://www.levitjames.com/crosseyes/CrossEyes.html), which costs $50.