Changing letters into weird symbols

[Mary]

My daughter typed a 14 page document, saving in intervals
and MS Word changed part of her document into weird
symbols after she saved it and was unable to recover her
document. It also sometimes changes names of documents,
it'll add a squiggly line and a dollar sign in front of
the name. Why does it do this?

Also, if you know about MS Works, she also wrote a 30 page
document (saving in intervals) and after saving it the
last time, it deleted the last seven pages. I cannot find
them anywhere. Why was it deleted?

Thank you.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The ~$<filename>.doc file is *not* the document file. It is the "owner" or
"lock" file Word creates to keep anyone else from opening the document for
editing. Although you can open and read it in Word (as plain text), it does
not contain the document text. See "WD: How Word for Windows Uses
Temporary Files" at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.