Word Document Shows Unreadable Text

[Sagehen]

An important Word document I saved suddenly shows weird symbols in the
document instead of the English words. I've tried selecting all the text and
changing the font to "Times New Roman" or something similar but it still
shows the weird symbols. I've also determined this problem is not caused by
my computer because I've emailed the document to myself and opened it with a
different computer to find the same result. If anyone can help me fix this
problem I will be very grateful.

I'm using MS Word 2003. I currently have Vista on my computer but I wasn't
using Vista when I originally created the document quite a while ago.

Thank you!

 

[DeanH]

Can you descibe these weird symbols?
Can you still read your text? Have a look at the following article, as this
usually solves the problems for most.
See: http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm

If all text has changed and it all looks like wingding characters, see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290978 "WD2002: Symbol
Characters Are Changed to Box Characters" (the instructions
should apply to Word 2003 as well) and for help on macro installation
http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm .

Come back if you need further assistance
Hope this helps
DeanH

 

[Sagehen]

The symbols are boxes and rectangles and then some "paragraphs" or lines of
some kind of Asian characters (like Chinese or something). Also, the document
is probably about 10x longer than it was before, there are some pages with
nothing except a few of these Asian-type characters at the top.

I tried running the macro but the document still shows the weird characters.
I've never run a macro before but I followed the directions. The one part I
was a little unclear about was at the very end the directions told me to
click the "Save" icon on the vba editor toolbar. I wasn't exactly sure what
it meant so I clicked on the little floppy disk icon that usually means
"save" although I wasn't sure if I was saving the document or the macro
itself....

 

[Sagehen]

One more thing I just noticed, I don't know if it'll be helpful or not...

When I try to scroll down through the document it lets me go to page 8, but
once I scroll down past page 8 the document jumps me back up to page 1. At
the bottom of the screen it says the document is 50 pages long, but for some
reason it doesn't let me scroll past page 8. I don't know exactly how long
the document was before it got all messed up, but I'm guessing it was around
8 pages long.

 

[DeanH]

Sorry that nothing has worked.
From your description it would seem that the document is corrupt.
Did you try Open and Repair from the Open dialog box?
As the macro did not work, we can assume that the problem was not the
"Wingding" thing.
A question for you, was this document opened/edited/saved from a flash
drive/USB/removeable media?
I ask as this is a sure-fire way of corrupting a document and copying/moving
onto a hard-drive, then working on the document, closing it and then
copy/moving back must be standard operating procedure.
All the best
DeanH

 

[Sagehen]

I tried doing the "Open and Repair" thing but it didn't do much.... a box
popped up saying "Errors were detected in the file but Word was able to open
the file by making the repairs listed below." (and then listed a few things)
But as far as I could tell nothing was changed.

Ya, I definitely remember the file got all messed up after I tried using a
flash drive to transport the document between two computers....

 

[DeanH]

ah ha! The dreaded Flash Drive stricks again!
I have many colleagues who habitually work on Word files from their flash
drives and say it is not a problem, then all of a sudden they come screaming
to me for help when their most important file corrupts!
Also I am not too sure if there is a certain method of recovering these
affected files.
Maybe another contributor to this newsgroup will have some advice.
All the best
DeanH

 

[Graham Mayor]

You would be lucky to recover the files from the flash drive - but to avoid
the problems in the first place, the macro at
http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm which copies files to flash
drive may help.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Sagehen]

ok, thanks for your help both of you.

I just spent an hour and a half chatting with OmniTech support.... and the
guy said that the file is badly corrupted and the only way to get it back is
to purchase Nucleus Kernel for Word for $49. Does anyone know much about this
program? Is it worth buying it to save this one document? (That's probably a
question only I can answer though I guess....)

 

[Graham Mayor]

Whether it can recover the document is anyone's guess, but at least they
provide the option to check before you buy -
http://www.nucleustechnologies.com/Download-Word-Document-Repair-Software.php

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Sagehen]

One more thing to update (if there was an "edit" button I would use it, but I
can't seem to find one).

I tried using the Nucleus Kernel for Word product... I emailed them and
everything but they emailed me back saying they could only recover one page
of the document. So...

Does anyone know of a different product that might be able to recover my
Word document other than the one I mentioned above?

Thank you.