Text Encoding ???

[Ib Contessa]

I am about two hours and five pages into a paper for
school and decide to save all the hard work. In the
proscess of saving, office locks up. The eternal
hourglass,... I have to "End Task" to get it to clear
and close. The document "is" in the folder I was trying
to save it to, however; it is a lighter color icon with a
~$ in front of it, as if
it is still open somewhere? I double click on it to open
it and it says, "Select the encoding that makes your
document readable." There is a list of things to choose
from, but they all seem to be different versions of boxes
and squigles? Is this document retrievable, and if so,
how do I go about it? Any help you could provide would
be greatly apreciated.

Sincerely,

Ib Contessa

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If the filename begins with ~$, that is just the "owner" or "lock" file; it
is not a copy of your document and is not readable in Word. Your document
should be somewhere in the same folder.