Since I have seen such characters before (question mark in a [dotted]
square) in an oddly corrupted document that was examined by some of the
gurus at Microsoft, I forwarded your question to one of them. He replied:
"The box with a question mark is just the symbol for a missing character.
Someone decided that it was friendlier for the new fonts to have an
update[d] symbol that included the question mark." That is, the question
mark in a square is the equivalent of the empty square in earlier fonts:
Word's "I can't print this" character. He adds: " I didn't realize before
that the missing character symbol was actually in the font (just like all
the other formatting symbols, it's makes sense but I didn't realize it)."
I then asked him what it would mean if the entire document were full of
these symbols, and he replied:
"That the document was corrupted. I'd suggest Ctrl+A and then applying Arial
and seeing what happens. If that works, then I'd really like a copy of the
document. But I expect they'll continue to see boxes."
So try applying Arial to the document. If that helps, please send the
document to me and I'll forward it. If not, then the document is probably
irrecoverable.
dee said:
Hi,
I am using Word 2007 and my document contains text formatted in
Calibri
font.
I have saved the file as 97 - 2003 compatible and have also embedded
the
TT
font.
When I sent to someone who uses Word 2003, the text formatted in Calibri
displays as garbage - question mark in a square.
The strange thing is - another file I sent displays the font correctly.
Help!