Unwanted Control Characters

[hwrd69]

I have opened an older word doc (verion unknown) that contains control
characters throughout. I would like to fix this so I can read the doc as
intended, but I do not know what to do. Any suggestions???

Thanks ahead of time for any and all assistance.

 

[CyberTaz]

If you mean symbols that look like these: ¢Ò ? ¡¤ as well as others they are
hidden characters that don't print. They let you know what accounts for
spacing in the doc & can be toggled on/off by the ¢Ò button on the Standard
toolbar or Cmd+8.

Another possibility is that there are Fields inserted in the doc which can
be displayed/hidden using Option+F9.

Word doesn't use any type of "control characters" other than these. If the
characters are not those it may be that the "older doc" uses a font that
isn't available on your system, but to be of any help you'll have to be more
descriptive of what these characters look like, where they appear, etc.

It would also be useful to know what version of Word & Mac OS you're
running.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[hwrd69]

I found out the app was an old program called PC-Word. I have no idea of its
version number or any details at this time. But at least I know what created
the docs.

thanks

 

[John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]]

If you want to know which version, go to File>Properties. It should tell
you there.

If you really HAVE to know, open the file with "Recover Text From Any File"
set as the Type. Look right at the end -- about ten lines from the bottom
you will see something such as "word.document.8". The number will give us
the version.

But it doesn't matter for your question: It's a PC Word .doc file, so that's
not going to help us. What do you mean by "control characters"? The things
Bob was talking about? Or something else?

Word doesn't use any control characters, so whatever they are, they were put
there by something else

Cheers

--

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]