My daughter recently moved many MS documents from a backup drive to her new iMac. Most of these documents open normally. But several others do not. When she tries to open them, Terminal launches.

So my daughter sent the file to me, and when I try, this is what I get:

"Last login: Wed Sep 26 10:16:00 on console
Harv:~ harvey$ /Users/harvey/Desktop/QUITCLAIM\ DEED\ 2 ; exit;
-bash: /Users/harvey/Desktop/QUITCLAIM DEED 2: cannot execute binary file
logout

[Process completed]"

FWIW, Apple suggested she call Microsoft. But is there a better/easier way to put these files to right?

Try something simple: Do a Get Info on the problem file(s) and change Open With to MS Word.

Jon, Bingo!

After I changed the Get Info and then directed Word to open "Recover Text From Any File", voilà!

There is (of course) a small pagination error, but that is easily put to right.

My daughter will, no doubt, think I'm brilliant.

Always, my thanks.

You're welcome, Harv. Glad to be of help.

You'd think that Apple could have deigned to give the same advice instead of thumbing their nose at anything by MS.

The only advice the Apple tech provided was that he provided a MS phone number. The validity/usefulness of that number, ah, now that gives me pause…

That's the important bit right there. It looks like the file is named quitclaim deed 2; is that right?

If so, the computer can't figure out what to do with it because it's missing the .doc (or .docx) extension from the end. I bet if you rename it to quitclaim deed 2.doc (or possibly .docx, depending on how it was saved), it will re-open correctly without needing to do the salvage-text-from-file tango.

I tried that, Tacit, and alas, no joy. The file icon will change from Terminal to Word, but to actually open the file requires that I first open Word and then "Recover Text From Any file".

Indeed I remain confused, but happy that I can (at least) achieve some success.

Another thought in such cases: TextEdit can open Word documents preserving most if not all formatting

I had forgotten about that, Macnerd, so thanks for reminding me.

I did give TE a go and indeed it did open the file. While much of the pagination was intact, the process via Word was a bit cleaner.

Still, 'tis a tip I'll try to remember.