I received a document with a ".doc" file extension. It appeared as a random smattering of symbols/characters when opened in Word as is, or in a text editor as a .rtf or .txt file.
When the file extension was changed to ".jpg" and opened in an image viewer it appeared as a low resolution screen capture of the first page of a Word document. Is it possible for a corrupted Word document to exhibit this behavior? Or is this a clear example of a renamed image file being passed off as a corrupted .doc file?
Thanks in advance for your help.
EDIT: I have done some more investigation and Mac OS X Lion tells me that the file is actually a Windows bitmap image (.bmp).
It's likely that it has been renamed, Word interprets binary files as random characters and symbols. The only way I can think that a valid word document would exhibit this behavior is if a thumbnail is embedded in the Word document and the image viewer finds the headers and displays it. Either way it seems like you wont be able to use the contents.