Hi,
the COBOL 85 standard says for file-status 39:
error on OPEN because the properties of the file are not compatible with those defined in the program.
If you want to fix it, you should know what is wrong with the output file.
To avoid the problem, you can write a small program that opens the same kind of file for output and writes something.
After that, you compare the output file with the original one to find out what the differences are....
Regards,
Crox