Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

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Jimbo72
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Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Jimbo72 »

Hi All

I bought Mellel yesterday and was becoming very impressed with it. I imported some word docs and worked on them for a few hours and then saved them. When I went back to work on them again Mellel wouldn't open them. It will open a blank, new page, it will also import RTF or word docs, but not Mellel docs. Very Frustrating! I notice a few people have had similar problems but nothing seems to work. It's the only program that does this...

I'm running a very new iMac 2.8Ghz with Leopard 10.5.3.

Any ideas anyone?
jannuss
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by jannuss »

Jimbo72 wrote:I imported some word docs and worked on them for a few hours and then saved them. When I went back to work on them again Mellel wouldn't open them....

I'm running a very new iMac 2.8Ghz with Leopard 10.5.3.
Jimbo, Mellel documents are actually folders. Sometimes Leopard loses its ability to recognize this.

See if the suggestions in this thread help

http://forum.redlers.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1617

Janet
Mart°n
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Mart°n »

All possible solutions could already be found in the following topics:

http://forum.redlers.com/viewtopic.php? ... hilit=onyx

http://forum.redlers.com/viewtopic.php? ... onyx#p8395

http://forum.redlers.com/viewtopic.php? ... onyx#p9599

I suggest the following order:

1. ensure that Mellel is inside your Applications folder

2. Restart your Mac (even if it’s hard for some people)

3. Run Onyx as outlined in the first of the three topics above and clean the Launch Service Database

4. If none of the steps above provide any solution, you could try to download the Mac OS 10.5.3 Combo Updater form Apple an re-apply that update to your Mac.
Jimbo72
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Jimbo72 »

Hello again

Thanks for your advice but after trying everything I'm afraid it hasn't solved the problem; however, I do have one mellel file that will open, all the rest won't. They are in the same folder and they look exactly the same in terms of name & extension - the difference is that the one that opens in Mellel will also open in TextEdit,whereas the others won't.

I couldn't for the life of me think why one worked and one didn't though. So, I tried creating new documents from scratch and they worked fine too. I wondered if it was only documents imported from Word but although most don't work, some still do.... Puzzling! After importing more Word documents I noticed that the documents created and saved in Windows Word 2003 are fine, the ones that I have created or edited in my Word X for Mac (2001) won't open after being converted to Mellel. I don't understand why but that seems to be the case.

It just re-confirms that buying Office for Mac all those years ago was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made...

I think I can live with this as (fortunately) most of the documents I have were created on a windows machine. It would be interesting to see if others have had the same experience.
Anyway, thanks for all you help
J
jannuss
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by jannuss »

Jimbo72 wrote:Hello again

Thanks for your advice but after trying everything I'm afraid it hasn't solved the problem; however, I do have one mellel file that will open, all the rest won't. They are in the same folder and they look exactly the same in terms of name & extension - the difference is that the one that opens in Mellel will also open in TextEdit,whereas the others won't.
Jimbo, how are you saving the files?

You should be saving them using file/save and the files should appear as filename.mellel.

Janet
Jimbo72
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Jimbo72 »

Hi Janet

That's exactly how I have been saving them. Some open again and some don't....

J
jannuss
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by jannuss »

OK, but you said that TextEdit opens the files as well . . . TextEdit can't open Mellel files.
[TextEdit can open main/xml/gz files, though, of course, all you'll see is giberish.]

So, I'm confused.
-- if you're saving your work to .mellel files, then we have one set of problem
-- if you're exporting your work to .doc or .rtf files, then we have another set of problems.

The files that you can read with TextEdit, what are they called and how do they look when you open them.

Janet
Jimbo72
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Jimbo72 »

Yes, sorry, I only see gibberish in xml files via TextEdit but it only opens the 'good' files - the others will not open at all. I want to save various word docs to Mellel docs so I can carry on working on them in Mellel. Problem is simply that once saved as a Mellel doc they won't open again - however, it does seem to be only for Mac Word docs and not Window Word docs...

If I unzip the 'bad' Mellel packages and try to open with TextEdit I get this message:

"The document “main.xml” could not be opened. Text encoding Unicode (UTF-8) is not applicable.
The file may have been saved using a different text encoding, or it may not be a text file."

I don't understand it all...

J
jannuss
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by jannuss »

OK, you should not be seeing the main.xml.gz files at all.
You should only be seeing files named filename.mellel.

The fact that you don't see proper Mellel files indicates that the problem is with Leopard, not with Mellel.

Why don't you walk us through what you've done on the system side.
Once we have a clearer picture, one of the system types should be able to help.

Janet
Jimbo72
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Jimbo72 »

I don't see 'main.xml.gz' in the folder, what I see is 'filename.mellel' as you suggest; however, if I right-click - Show Package Contents - i can see 'main.xml.gz' which I can then unzip to a 'main.xml' file which then opens as gibberish in TextEdit if a 'good' file or doesn't open at all if a "bad' file.

As for for the system side, I have used Onyx to Rebuild LaunchServices but with no luck and I have installed Mac OS X 10.5.3 Combo Update again but with no luck either.

But I have repeatedly tried importing other Word docs to see if it's just me going insane but with the same results - those that originate from the Windows Word work (i.e., they import and save as filename.mellel and then will open again if closed), those from the Mac Word don't (will save as filename.mellel, but won't open again if closed). I'm struggling to see why OS X or Mellel would distinguish between the two though.
J
Mart°n
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Mart°n »

Jimbo72 wrote: But I have repeatedly tried importing other Word docs to see if it's just me going insane but with the same results - those that originate from the Windows Word work (i.e., they import and save as filename.mellel and then will open again if closed), those from the Mac Word don't (will save as filename.mellel, but won't open again if closed). I'm struggling to see why OS X or Mellel would distinguish between the two though.
J
Strange thing indeed. As I’ve thought, that you’ll see the documentname.mellel files as folders and because of this they won’t be opened by Mellel, all the previous tips probably couldn’t help and led you in the wrong direction. As it seems, the problem is within Mellel or your Mac. As I’m not on 10.5.3 I only could guess where the problem may be buried.

You could try two things. First is to switch off the file compression in Mellel. There have been problems with this a very long time ago but maybe you are still affected: Mellel > Preferences > Open & Save > Use compressed file format. Check this option off and see if it makes any difference.
Second, you could try not to double-click your Mellel files in the Finder but to open Mellel and choose: File > Open or File > Open Recent… to open the files from within Mellel.

You also could check the file size of your Mellel files. Are the one that could be opened via TextEdit significant smaller or lager than the other ones? Are there some with zero KB in size?
Have you enabled Apples FileVault encryption for your user folder by any chance?
Jimbo72
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Jimbo72 »

File compression doesn't seem to make a difference, nor does opening in Mellel rather than finder (it just opens an 'Untitled' doc instead). File size doesn't make a difference and FireVAult is off too...
J
Jimbo72
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Jimbo72 »

Further update:

I have managed to import, save as filename.mellel, close and open again from Mac Word created document. The document was simply a 20-page copy-and-paste from an online journal. This makes me think the problem may lie in Mellel not liking any Mac Word docs that have Endnote citations in them, so far it seems anything without them is OK.

J
Mart°n
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Mart°n »

As it really looks like a problem within Mellel, you may want to contact the Redlers directly and send them one of the “corrupt” files if their content isn’t too secret:

Support: support (at) redlers.com
Roger
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Re: Mellel won't open mellel docs in Leopard

Post by Roger »

I have Word for Mac (MS Office 2004) and do not have the problems you describe. My Word docs do not contain Endnote citations - that may be the difference. I have two troubleshooting suggestions that I did not see mentioned in this thread:

1. Have you tried first exporting from Word to RTF, and then importing the RTF into Mellel? That usually takes care of any idiosyncrasies in the Word file.

2. Do you have access to another Mac? If you can test it on another machine, you'll be able to tell if it has something to do with your particular setup, or if it is a generalized problem.
________________
Roger
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