Word - Characters appear as square boxes

[tattl]

All,

I have a kid who has a college assignment in word which shows mostly small square boxes where his text was. Some text still appears on the page. This is a 50 page document. Please HELP!!!

Thanks

 

[AnotherHiggins]

Try changing the font. It could be typed in a font that isn't on your computer.

[tt][blue]-John[/blue][/tt]
[tab][red]The plural of anecdote is not data[/red]

Help us help you. Please read FAQ 181-2886 before posting.

 

[Madawc]

The 'small square boxes' mean that there is nothing printable for the ASCII character.

Try copying using Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted Text.

Madawc Williams (East Anglia, UK). Using Windows XP & Crystal 10

 

[tattl]

The entire doc was written in Times New Roman, and was visible before. Now only some text is visible. I tried changing the font and using the paste special suggestion, but they didn't work.

 

[AnotherHiggins]

Hmm. This is just a guess, but you could try opening it in OpenOffice. I've had a lot of luck recovering corrupt Excel files that way.

If you're not familiar with it, OpenOffice is a free, open source office suite available for download at

http://www.OpenOffice.org.

If it opens correctly in OO, then you can go to save it as a new Word document.

[tt][blue]-John[/blue][/tt]
[tab][red]The plural of anecdote is not data[/red]

Help us help you. Please read FAQ 181-2886 before posting.

 

[fumei]

The entire doc was written in Times New Roman, and was visible before. Now only some text is visible. "

That implies SOMETHING was done to it. If it was visible before, but now it is not...WHAT was done to it?

Gerry

 

[SkipVought]

Does your kid have a licenced copy of MS Word installed on his/her computer?

Skip,
^{Don't let the Diatribe...
talk you to death!}
_{Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE!}

 

[Salut39]

Have you tried changing Encoding from View Menu.

Yuri

 

[zsty1e]

I just had the same issue. What I found was file synchronization was not working. After I successfully synchronized offline files the file that was on the server was complete without the box characters.

Hope this helps for the next time.