new wikileaks document help!!

I've had a bit of trouble opening the files provided by wikileaks regarding the new 'Afgan Troop Diaries'. I tried opening it with microsoft word, and notebook. But when I opened it, it took a second to load and gave me 50 pages of weird characters [F2\‰x«cÀswáêS¡£›O‰].

Any .pdf of the 'Afgan troop diaries'? Or should I be using a program to open the file?

reply to post by BiGGz


You can look through the documents here. In the left-hand column you can choose how to browse them (by category, date, location, etc).

As far as downloading them, it looks like they have compressed database files in a choice of formats. If you downloaded the first link (csv, or comma-separated-variables) then you probably need to un-compress it and then open it in Microsoft Excel or similar.

reply to post by BiGGz


If it is a pdf you need adobe reader.

I can't even get the files.

reply to post by americandingbat


Thanks!!! That works.

[edit on 25/7/2010 by PuterMan]

reply to post by BiGGz


Same here. I tried everything I know and NADA. With respect to uncompressing files, I will have to research that for a Mac. A tad frustrating, but certainly worth the effort if these are the original documents. If anyone is familiar with these types of formats a little help would be greatly appreciated.

reply to post by dazbog


The compression they seem to be using is 7-zip.

There's a list of 7-zip utilities for other operating systems here. I have no idea how good any of them are, but you might try the p7zip for Mac OS X .

EDIT: oops, just tried following the p7zip for Mac link myself and it seems broken.

[edit on 7/25/2010 by americandingbat]