Documents replaced with squares in Word 2000

[R P]

Hi,
I backed up a bunch of Word documents to CD-R before switching over to
a new computer system. Sadly all of the word documents in this batch
are now entirely replaced with small squares or boxes where characters
or spaces should be. The file sizes of the documents appear to be the
same as what they used to be (compared to the few other docs I saved
through other means that saved OK). These documents are between 5 and
25 pages long.

I have also noticed that the font that is showing up on all of these
docs is Courier New 10 pt. plain text. This is not a font (or
paragraph format) I would have ever used in documents like these. I am
using Word 2000. Any idea what is happening here and if I have a
chance to recover these files?

I have tried the following with no success:

1.Cutting and pasting to notepad. (Results in pages and pages of
blankness.)
2.Opening with Recover text from file. (Results in one blank page
showing 0 characters in file.)
3.Numerous demo version of document recovery programs (Results in a
blank page with a few weird characters (a couple looking like bluw
hyperlinks) on the page.
4.Changing the font (results in bigger or smaller squares).

When I click the show/hide tool bar, all of the squares turn into
"y"-like characters with two dots over the "y"..., with the exception
of the final character on the page, which is the harp shaped symbol in
the show/hide toolbar.

Any help or advice would be appreciated. Should I just give up and go
back to work?

RP

 

[Klaus Linke]

I backed up a bunch of Word documents to CD-R

[...]
When I click the show/hide tool bar, all of the squares turn
into "y"-like characters with two dots over the "y"..., [...]

Hi RP,

Sorry, it doesn't look good.

ÿ is what Word shows for ASCII zero. If you have pages and pages of those,
the "documents" don't contain any information at all that you could rescue.

Did you try if it makes a difference whether you open the files from CD, or
copy them to your hard disk first?
Or maybe you could try another machine with a different CD player?

If that doesn't help, you could google for tools that might be able to
rescue files from a bad CD, like
http://pcworld.about.com/magazine/1912p206id65145.htm

If the files aren't terribly important, I'd give up :-(

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Try this article: "WD2002: Unexpected Characters Are Added to Your Document"
at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=329366