Help! my documents are all corrupt now...wtf do I do?

Question

I'm serious. I have a HP and it came with the microsoft works program. Our computer got a virus, so we used the recovery discs as usual, and when I went to click on my summer assignments that were done with Microsoft Works....nothing would open. it was allways an error. So I opened them up with notepad, copied and pasted them to word pad (the only other 2 word processors I have), and now, EVERY SINGLE LETTER HAS A SPACE BETWEEN THE NEXT, AND IN BETWEEN WORDS, THERE ARE 3 SPACES....how the hell do I get rid of this?

and, I dont have the origional discs that came with the software, as this computer was given to us

I Do Not have microsoft word....I only have microsoft word pad....which has the find option, but NOT find and replace

Answer 1

You will need to come up with a copy of MS Works to put back on the computer. The format the Works uses for its documents is not compatible with Notepad, etc.

Depending on how many documents you have, you can manually fix them using MS Word instead of Works.
Open a document in Word
Since there are three spaces between each word, use the "earch and replace" feature to replace every occurance of " " (3 spaces) with a unique character (such as 2 em dashes)
Then use search and replace to replace every single space with nothing, thus taking out the space between letters
Finally go back and replace your unique character with a space, putting a space between words (Note: if you try to delete all the single spaces, it would also delete all the 3 spaces between words, such they are just three single spaces. That why you have to replace the triple spaces with something else first)

A bit of work, but if you any have a handful of documents it would work.

Answer 2

you could do a find and replace in word. Have it replace a single sapce with none and then have it replace three spaces with only 1.

Answer 3

I think there is some back up or something, or I guess you have to start all over again. :P